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🏞️ Major US river 🌊 Texas river
Colorado River

Colorado River

12 2.5
A large river in the southwestern US and northwestern Mexico that carved the Grand Canyon and supplies water
  • proper noun
  • /ˌkɒləˈrædoʊ ˈrɪvər/
translation icon : río Colorado
  • What they do at that mine is they pump water from the Colorado River deep underground.
  • Little Colorado River
  • Colorado River Reservation
  • Colorado River water

And the way he talks about the Colorado River is in this both life giving and death giving.

Examples

  • Compounding the drought problems is a reduction in the amount of surplus Colorado River water available to surrounding states.

    Academic text (2003)

  • Teamsters' wagons hauled supplies to the new settlements from various Colorado River ports, including Hardyville near Camp Mojave.

    Academic text (1998)

  • You cross the Colorado River at...

    Virginia City (1940)

  • Competition over the water resources of the Colorado River has led to two major agreements.

    Academic text (1998)

  • And just a few weeks later, they crossed the Colorado River into California.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • In the past, Los Angeles has channeled its potable water all the way from the Colorado River.

    Academic text (2002)

  • So I took the Colorado River all the way down through the Grand Canyon and did rapids, which is by far one of the scariest things I've ever done.

    Into the Wild (2007)

  • The contemporary Colorado River differs significantly from the waterway depicted in Curt Teich's 1936-1955 imagery.

    Academic text (2012)

  • In the 1770s, Garces traveled along the lower Colorado River and became acquainted with the Mohave and Quechan chiefs.

    Academic text (1999)

  • The Grand Canyon is a natural wonder shaped by the Colorado River over millions of years.

Surface Forms

Colorado River main

Morphology

Colorado + river

The phrase is a straightforward place-name composed of a proper name plus the noun 'river', so a learner who knows 'river' and recognizes 'Colorado' as a name will understand it denotes a river called Colorado. This naming pattern (PLACE + river) is compositional and cross-linguistically common, so the basic meaning is immediately transparent even if the learner cannot identify the exact geographic location.

Etymology

Colorado River gets its name from the Spanish word Colorado, which means 'red'; early explorers saw red-brown mud and silt in the water and so called it the 'red' river, a name that stuck to the river we know today.