Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • The longest river in the world, flowing about 6,675 km (4,150 mi) through eastern Africa from its most remote sources in Burundi to a delta on the Mediterranean Sea in northeast Egypt. The main headstreams, the Blue Nile and the White Nile, join at Khartoum in Sudan to form the Nile proper. The river has been used for irrigation in Egypt since at least 4000 BC, a function now regulated largely by the Aswan High Dam.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The great river of Egypt.
  • noun (Zoöl.), [Prov. Eng.] The crocodile bird.
  • noun (Zoöl.) the Egyptian goose. See Note under Goose, 2.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun Usually considered to be the longest river in the world, the Nile flows 6,677 km (4,150 miles) through Khartoum and Cairo in Africa into the Mediterranean Sea.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the world's longest river (4150 miles); flows northward through eastern Africa into the Mediterranean; the Nile River valley in Egypt was the site of the world's first great civilization

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek Νεῖλος (Neilos).

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