river boulder
- noun
- /ˈrɪvər ˈboʊldər/
:
roca de río
- Geologists examined the river boulder to determine what kind of rock it originated from upstream.
Examples
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Children played on the smooth surface of the giant river boulder beside the stream.
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The river boulder was smooth and shiny.
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The glacier melted, leaving a massive river boulder in the middle of the field.
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Look at that massive river boulder!
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The children climbed on top of the large river boulder that lay in the shallow water.
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As we walked along the bank, I spotted a giant river boulder covered in moss.
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While hiking, we found a river boulder that had been smoothed by years of flowing water.
Synonyms
191
2.2
A very large round rock that lies on the ground
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and transparently derived from combining 'river' (a watercourse) with 'boulder' (a large rock): a boulder associated with or moved by a river. This simple noun–noun compounding/location pattern is common cross-linguistically and would be clear to a B1 learner who knows the two constituents.
Etymology
River boulder comes from the clear image of a big boulder that a flowing river has carried along and then left on a bank or in the stream. So, a river boulder means a large rock that was 'moved' by a river and now lies far from its original place.