dry wash
1
8.2
- noun
- US
:
cauce seco
- Kids love to play in the dry wash after a storm passes through the desert.
Examples
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After the rain stopped, the water quickly filled the dry wash near our campsite.
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Nora Kelly guided the rattletrap Ford pickup along the road, down chamisa-covered hills and across the beds of dry washes.
Fiction book (2000) -
Well, the river used to flow along the dry wash at the foot of the mountain.
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We'll change the course of the river, send it back along the dry wash where it used to go.
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There's a dry wash south of town.
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Julio used to sit on a rock that stuck out over the dry wash behind the barn and play his guitar.
Fiction book (1998) -
It seemed as if the river had changed course, gone wild, lashing angrily at everything in its path along an old dry wash.
Fiction book (1994) -
I followed the car's course through dry washes, below hogbacks, over the lips of ridges.
Fiction book (1998) -
The desert tract-housing development he and Marta had bought into wound over and through a dry wash, with newer models appearing every few months.
Fiction book (1990) -
We found colorful stones and tracks in the dry wash where the river flowed last week.
Synonyms
22
8.1
A dry stream bed that fills with water after heavy rain
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun is directly and compositionally built from 'dry' (not wet) modifying 'wash' (a channel that fills only during heavy rain), so the overall meaning of a dry stream bed is predictable from the constituents. This modifier+noun pattern is cross-linguistically common and follows standard English compounding, making it readily understandable to a B1 learner who knows both words.
Etymology
Dry wash comes from the picture of dry low ground and a narrow path called a wash that sudden rain runs through, carrying water and mud. So it means 'a dry stream bed or channel that fills with water for a short time after heavy rain'.