As I was reading today I wondered what the difference is between a brook and a creek. Then I got to wondering about the stream and the river.Dictionary.com defines them as...
Brook - a small, natural stream of fresh water
Brook - a small, natural stream of fresh water
Creek - (in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.) a stream smaller than a river
Stream - a body of water flowing in a channel or watercourse, as a river, rivulet, or brook
River - a natural stream of water of fairly large size flowing in a definite course or channel or series of diverging and converging channels
So a brook is smaller than a creek which is smaller than a steam which is smaller than a river. I'm just trying to decide if my grandpa's farm has a creek or a stream or a brook that runs along one side. It must be a creek considering it doesn't look nearly as lovely as the description sounds of the brook that streams by Green Gables.
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4 comments:
Well my take on it is that a brook, a creak and a stream could be used to describe the same flowing water. I think we have the old "coke", "soda", "pop" thing going here. The funny thing is they used each term in each discription. Where I come from we call it a creek but if I were writing I'd probably say stream or brook because that sounds more poetic, don't ya think?
re: the message before, sorry I meant "creek" not "creak".
a brook is a flowing body of water with no tributaries and dries up part of the year.
a creek is a flowing body of water with several brooks as tributaries.
a stream is a flowing body of water with one or more creeks as tributaries.
a river has one or more major tributaries and any number of the previous flowing bodies of water.
For what it's worth, in southern California where I grew up there are many rivers which flow only rarely, but they all have the property of leading to the sea.
Their tributaries are called creeks, and there was no such thing as a "brook" in that region. A creek is still a creek even when dry, which they are 95% of the time.
The usage of "stream" is more ambiguous, but it does seem to be a diminutive. I've never heard it applied to a watercourse that was not actually flowing at the time.
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