outwash

American  

[out-wosh, -wawsh] / ˈaʊtˌwɒʃ, -ˌwɔʃ /

noun

Geology.

1. the material, chiefly sand or gravel, deposited by meltwater streams in front of a glacier.

---

outwash British  

/ ˈaʊtˌwɒʃ /

noun

1. a mass of gravel, sand, etc, carried and deposited by the water derived from melting glaciers

---

Etymology

Origin of outwash

First recorded in 1890–95; out- + wash

Example Sentences

The main reason for this was something called outwash.

From BBC • Mar. 16, 2022

The sediments that became moldavites represent a time when sea level was low, and sand, gravel and clay were being distributed in vast outwash fans where mountain streams emptied onto the plains.

From Scientific American • Aug. 9, 2019

“It’s pretty much statewide, it’s scattered around, but worse in places where you have well-drained, rocky, glacial outwash soils, and it’s worse in young trees with less-developed root systems.”

From Seattle Times • Aug. 6, 2016

Depending on its velocity, this water is able to move sediments of various sizes and most of that material is washed out of the lower end of the glacier and deposited as outwash sediments.

From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2015

Where the margin lay upon the lands numerous streams issued from beneath the ice, milk-white with rock flour, and built up great outwash plains and valley trains of gravel and sand.

From Climatic Changes Their Nature and Causes by Huntington, Ellsworth