Definitions

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

  • noun A deep gully cut by an intermittent stream; a dry gulch.
  • noun A brook; a creek.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A watercourse; a rivulet. Also arrollo.

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

  • noun A water course; a rivulet.
  • noun Western U. S. The dry bed of a small stream.

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

  • noun A dry creek or stream bed, a gulch which temporarily or seasonally fills and flows (after sufficient rain).
  • noun Any water course; any rivulet (whether it flows year-round or only seasonally).

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

  • noun a stream or brook

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Spanish, from Vulgar Latin *arrugius, gold mine, underground passage, variant of Latin arrugia, a galleried mine.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Spanish arroyo.

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Examples

  • The word arroyo has appeared in one New York Times article in the past year, on Jan. 1 in the Scientist at Work blog post "The Sun, the Moon and the Quail" by Jennifer Gee:

    NYT > Home Page By THE LEARNING NETWORK 2012

  • Learn more about the word "arroyo" and see usage examples across a range of subjects on the Vocabulary.com dictionary.

    NYT > Home Page By THE LEARNING NETWORK 2012

  • Finally, the arroyo is too strong and takes the taxi away.

    Global Voices in English » Colombia: Living with Flooding in Barranquilla 2009

  • Lots of people living along the main arroyo have lost everything and I think some folks are still missing - very sad, it is such a lovely little town.

    Alamos and Norbert 2008

  • Lots of people living along the main arroyo have lost everything and I think some folks are still missing - very sad, it is such a lovely little town.

    Alamos and Norbert 2008

  • Lots of people living along the main arroyo have lost everything and I think some folks are still missing - very sad, it is such a lovely little town.

    Alamos and Norbert 2008

  • Lots of people living along the main arroyo have lost everything and I think some folks are still missing - very sad, it is such a lovely little town.

    Alamos and Norbert 2008

  • Lots of people living along the main arroyo have lost everything and I think some folks are still missing - very sad, it is such a lovely little town.

    Alamos and Norbert 2008

  • Lots of people living along the main arroyo have lost everything and I think some folks are still missing - very sad, it is such a lovely little town.

    Alamos and Norbert 2008

  • Lots of people living along the main arroyo have lost everything and I think some folks are still missing - very sad, it is such a lovely little town.

    Alamos and Norbert 2008

Comments

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  • The hills were huge rolling hummocks of bare ground, covered only by wild oats. At long intervals, were isolated live oaks. In the canyons and arroyos, the chaparral and manzanita grew in dark olive-green thickets. The ground was honey-combed with gopher-holes, and the gophers themselves were everywhere. Occasionally a jack rabbit bounded across the open, from one growth of chaparral to another, taking long leaps, his ears erect. High overhead, a hawk or two swung at anchor, and once, with a startling rush of wings, a covey of quail flushed from the brush at the side of the trail.

    - Frank Norris, The Octopus, bk 2, ch. 3

    August 26, 2008

  • "Her eyes moved from side to side in small, shooting peeks. Scraggle-headed and tremble-mouthed, she looked like a diseased coyote driven into its final arroyo." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.

    January 28, 2011

  • From the examples:

    “It is surmised that the very name Guadalupe has its origins in the Arabic wadi lupe, that is, an arroyo of dark sand.”

    --The Huffington Post: Susan J. Cobb: The Inner Virgin Comes Out In Revolution

    May 23, 2012