rivulet

From Old French riveret (“little stream”) or from Italian rivoletto, from Italian rivo, from Latin rivus.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹɪv.jə.lət/

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rivulet (plural rivulets)

1. A small brook or stream; a streamlet; a gill.

   A rivulet of tears ran down his face.

   • 1777, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal, I.i:

     Yes Madam I think you will like them—when you shall see in a beautiful Quarto Page how a neat rivulet of Text shall meander thro' a meadow of margin—'fore Gad, they will be the most elegant Things of their kind—

   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     The struggle with ways and means had recommenced, more difficult now a hundredfold than it had been before, because of their increasing needs. Their income disappeared as a little rivulet that is swallowed by the thirsty ground.

   • 1945, Charles Cotton, Geomorphology: An Introduction to the Study of Landforms:

     Rills running down the steepest slopes develop into rivulets.

2. Perizoma affinitatum, a geometrid moth.

• (small brook or stream): rill

• Blomer's rivulet

• rival