irrigation

American  

[ir-i-gey-shuhn] / ˌɪr ɪˈgeɪ ʃən /

noun

irrigations plural

1. the artificial application of water to land to assist in the production of crops.

2. Medicine/Medical. the flushing or washing out of anything with water or other liquid.

3. the state of being irrigated.

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irrigation Cultural  

1. Artificial provision of water to sustain growing plants.

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Irrigation accounts for the greatest part of water usage in the western United States.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• nonirrigation
  noun
• overirrigation
  noun
• preirrigation
  noun
• reirrigation
  noun
• irrigational
  adjective
• preirrigational
  adjective
• proirrigation
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• irrigations
  plural

Etymology

Origin of irrigation

First recorded in 1605–15, irrigation is from the Latin word irrigātiōn- (stem of irrigātiō ). See irrigate, -ion

Explanation

Irrigation is the watering of land to make it ready for agriculture. If you want to start a strawberry farm in the desert, irrigation will be necessary. Irrigation comes from the Latin for "moist" or "wet," but it means the purposeful wetting of something. We wouldn’t really say that a storm provides irrigation (unless we were poetically trying to personify the storm). Irrigation systems are often complex combinations of canals, channels, and hoses. The word irrigation is also used in medicine to describe the process of washing out a wound before dressing it.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

irrigation irrigations

Keller, for his part, has stepped up irrigation work on his land.

From Barron's ● Jul. 26, 2026

The FDA team probed everything from Taylor’s irrigation water to portable restrooms on farms and medications provided to members of the company’s harvest crews.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 18, 2026

Vaughan called the system The Drownings, and his methods have been generally said by historians to have inspired the irrigation systems which increased crop yields during the agricultural revolution from the 16th Century onwards.

From BBC ● Jun. 30, 2026

Salt buildup in farmland is becoming an increasingly serious problem because of climate change, irrigation practices, and rising sea levels.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 29, 2026

None of the crucial developments preceding political centralization in those same parts of the world were associated with river valleys or with complex irrigation systems.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

"I can go online and see what irrigations are needed down in Santa Barbara, 300 miles away," says Mr Maraden, who is based in Napa, north west of San Francisco.

From BBC ● Apr. 17, 2024

To do it, the country had to build massive irrigations systems and will use up to 800 Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of water.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 3, 2022

“If you took all the people who say they have chronic sinusitis in the world, and you put them all on nasal saline irrigations, a big proportion would not have any symptoms anymore,” he said.

From New York Times ● May 12, 2011

Using satellite imagery between 1998 and 2002, Beman and colleagues discovered algae blooms up to 220 square miles large that followed just days after the periodic irrigations in the valley.

From Washington Post

These vineyards which seem to have existed from very remote antiquity, were all in the plain, where they were subjected to continual irrigations after the system of the Greeks and Tatars.

From Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea, the Crimea, the Caucasus, &c. by Hell, Xavier Hommaire de