slack water
1
7.9
- noun
- /slæk ˈwɔːtər/
- Specialized
:
agua muerta
- Moonlight's showing lines and circles in slack water.
Examples
-
The Columbia is no longer a river; it is a succession of slack-water pools behind dams.
Academic text (1990) -
It would be slack water soon, and the water would be almost silent, but it would still sound lonely.
Fiction book (1992) -
Benson put the canoe into the slack water at the head of the island.
Fiction book (2001) -
Benson gave Konrad a push out of the current and into the slack water along the rocks.
Fiction book (2001) -
It gained the slack water on the other side and bounded out of the river.
Fiction book (2001) -
Our journey took us through Lake Ferguson, one of the few slack water ports on the lower Mississippi (and the only one between Venice, Louisiana, and Memphis, Tennessee).
Blog text (11) -
After a moment of slack water, the flow reversed and began moving out once again, but much more slowly.
-
Benson put the canoe into the slack water at the head of the island.
-
Geese and coots called to each other in the slack water behind me, and osprey perched in the cottonwoods above.
Synonyms
4
1.4
Calm water in a lake or pond with no waves
1
8.0
A stretch of water where the current is slow or still
1
7.0
A short time when the water is almost still before the current changes direction
How Still
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a time or place when the water is still or has little movement' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'slack' (little or no current) with 'water' (a body of water). This is a straightforward compositional noun phrase and the logic is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Slack water comes from sailors watching the tide. They called the tide slack when it stopped moving, so slack water is the time when the water is almost still as the tide changes, and that is why it means 'a time or place when the water has very little movement'.