oxbow

[ oks-boh ]

noun
  1. a U-shaped piece of wood placed under and around the neck of an ox with its upper ends in the bar of the yoke.

  2. Physical Geography, Geology.

    • a bow-shaped bend in a river, or the land embraced by it.

    • Also called oxbow lake . a bow-shaped lake formed in a former channel of a river.

Origin of oxbow

1
Middle English word dating back to 1325–75; see origin at ox, bow2

Words Nearby oxbow

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How to use oxbow in a sentence

British Dictionary definitions for oxbow

oxbow

/ (ˈɒksˌbəʊ) /


noun
  1. a U-shaped piece of wood fitted under and around the neck of a harnessed ox and attached to the yoke

  2. Also called: oxbow lake, cutoff a small curved lake lying on the flood plain of a river and constituting the remnant of a former meander

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Scientific definitions for oxbow

oxbow

[ ŏksbō′ ]


  1. A sharp, U-shaped bend in a river. The bend is so sharp that only a narrow neck of land is left between the two parts of the river.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.