A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
oued
An oued is a valley or watercourse that is dry for most of the year and runs only after rain, sometimes violently. The term is used across North Africa and appears in hundreds of place names from Morocco to Egypt. It is the same word English usually spells wadi, and it names the same feature the American Southwest calls an arroyo and South Asia calls a nullah.
Etymology
The word is Arabic for a valley or a riverbed, and the spelling oued is the French transliteration, which is why it appears that way on maps of the Maghreb and wadi on maps of the Arabian peninsula and the Levant. Two spellings of one Arabic word, split by which European power was making the maps.
Notes
The same Arabic word is inside a Spanish place name English speakers use constantly: the Guadalquivir is the great oued, and Guadalajara, Guadalupe, and a long list of others begin with the same element, left over from centuries of Arabic in Spain.