A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
975 entries
arroyo
A dry creek bed or gulch in the desert that carries water only during and immediately after rain — a channel carved by flash floods and bone-dry the rest of the year. Arroyos are the drainage architecture of arid landscapes, cutting deep into alluvium and soft rock, their steep banks revealing soil layers and fossil roots.
Etymology
Spanish, from Latin arrugia, a gold mine shaft or water channel. The word came to the New World with Spanish colonists and is the standard term across the American Southwest.