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Glite Dictionary
🦷 Forceful removal 🌊 Sudden river change
avulsion

avulsion

9.9
A sudden change in a river's course that moves land from one owner to another
  • noun
  • /əˈvəlʃən/
  • Specialized
translation icon : avulsión
  • The avulsion caused by the flood shifted the river's course, resulting in new land boundaries for the adjacent properties.

Examples

  • The river may also spill over the dam to an entirely new location, eroding a new channel while the dam blocks the old one, creating a channel avulsion (John and Klein 2004).

    Academic text (2010)

  • The avulsion of the river changed the property lines, transferring land from one farmer to another.

  • After the heavy rain, an avulsion altered the river's path, leading to disputes over land ownership.

Antonyms

stability
363 3.1

Being steady and not likely to change

continuity
52 4.7

A situation where things stay the same or keep happening without big changes

Surface Forms

avulsion singular
avulsions plural

Morphology

avulsion = avulse (opaque) = avulse + ion

Although formed from 'avulse' + '-ion', 'avulse' is a rare, Latin-derived verb and the specialized legal/geomorphological sense is not inferable for average learners.

Etymology

Avulsion comes from the Latin verb avellere, from ab- 'away' and vellere 'to pull'. So an avulsion is like something being 'pulled away', which helps explain why a river avulsion suddenly tears away land and can change property lines.