drowned valley

American  

noun

1. a valley that, having been flooded by the sea, now exists as a bay or estuary.

---

Etymology

Origin of drowned valley

First recorded in 1900–05

Example Sentences

Stumps and dead boughs were rotting in the shallows, the remains it seemed of old thickets, or of a hedge that had once lined the road across the drowned valley.

From Literature

In this great extent of coast, measuring nearly 5,000 miles, there are but few harbours; in the portion belonging to the United States the generally bold coast-line is broken but in two places, one 49 where the Columbia reaches the sea, and the other where the Sacramento finds an outlet through the portions of its drowned valley known as the Golden Gate.

From Project Gutenberg

The Bay of San Francisco owes its origin to a subsidence of the land which has admitted the sea into the valley of the Sacramento, but this valley, which, uniting with the one at the south drained by the San Joaquin, forms the Great Valley of California, is not due to stream erosion, as in the case of the drowned valley of the Hudson or of the St. Lawrence, but to the upraising of the mountains bordering it.

From Project Gutenberg

They plodded on, arguing, toward their rendezvous with Quintana's outpost on the edge of Drowned Valley.

From Project Gutenberg

THE soft, bluish forest shadows had lengthened, and the barred sun-rays, filtering through, were tinged with a rosy hue before Jake Kloon, the hootch runner, and Earl Leverett, trap thief, came to Drowned Valley.

From Project Gutenberg