Definitions

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

  • adjective Of or relating to groundwater.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Subterranean, as the sources of wells.

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

  • adjective (Geol.) Subterranean; -- applied to sources supplying wells.

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

  • adjective geology Of or pertaining to ground water

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

  • adjective of or relating to ground water

Etymologies

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

[From Greek phrear, phreat-, well, spring; see bhreu- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek stem of φρέαρ (phrear, "well, spring")

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Examples

  • So in this telling, it was what geologists call a phreatic, or steam-powered flash explosion, that caused such headaches for the travel industry.

    Knight Science Journalism Tracker Charlie Petit 2010

  • So in this telling, it was what geologists call a phreatic, or steam-powered flash explosion, that caused such headaches for the travel industry.

    Knight Science Journalism Tracker Charlie Petit 2010

  • Now throw in singular events such as phreatic volcanic eruptions, which can measurably affect global temperatures for up to 10 years and you have a detection of overlappping causes problem of monumental proportions.

    Paul Linsay's Poisson Fit « Climate Audit 2007

  • No magmatic eruptions have occurred since the late Pleistocene, but large phreatic eruptions took place near Yellowstone Lake during the Holocene.

    Volcano Information 2008

  • As it is known, the problem is the phreatic mantle, the technicians ... [changes thought] However, I am told that they are about to find the solution.

    CASTRO DELIVERS SPEECH 1989

  • Mexico has hydraulic energy which has been affected by suspicious droughts coinciding with certain U.S. experiments related to hurricanes, and which in Mexico, as in Cuba, constitute irreplaceable sources of water for the rivers and for the phreatic mantle.

    FRIENDSHIP RALLY FOR MEXICAN PRES. PORTILLO 1980

  • Jimenez [president of the Cuban National Academy of Sciences] always reminds us that they help to fill the phreatic layer.

    CASTRO SPEAKS AT INRA-DAP MERGER 1969

  • That is what it must be; that no a single riverlet, arroyo, river, absolutely nothing remain undammed -- in addition to the use of drainage, the different types and systems of damming, the system for the injection of water in the phreatic mantle, and the use of subterranean water.

    INSTITUTE FOR HYDRAULIC RESOURCES 1963

  • However, the magma in the volcano is of the nature that it doesn't have to come in contact with water for phreatic explosions to happen, which indicates that ash will continue to be produced.

    Iceland Review 2010

  • Einarsson explained that when the eruption becomes isolated from the water around the crater, phreatic explosions decrease.

    Iceland Review 2010

Comments

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  • "I remembered the phreatic, throat-like shape from years ago; and the smell – heavy and stagnant – of something I could never quite identify."

    Rising Ground by Philip Marsden, p 7 of the University of Chicago Press hardcover

    September 21, 2016