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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Discover More

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

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

There are several variables when it comes to up-front and ongoing costs of using grass, especially in domed stadiums where permanent ultraviolet grow-light systems, drainage and irrigation would need to be installed.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 9, 2026

Nearly half of the country's net sown farmland has no assured irrigation and depends largely on rainfall, making the timing and spread of the monsoon critical for millions of farmers.

From BBC ● Jul. 1, 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

It says nothing about what drove the progression from bands to tribes to chiefdoms during all the millennia before the prospect of large-scale irrigation loomed up on the horizon.

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

Injections and irrigations of the bladder also proved useful adjuncts to the maize.

From New, Old, and Forgotten Remedies: Papers by Many Writers by Anshutz, Edward Pollock