FromMiddle Englishfreche watur,fresshe water; equivalent tofresh +water.
freshwater (notcomparable)
- Living infresh water.
The trout is afreshwater fish.
- Consisting offresh water.
Lake Baikal is the world's largestfreshwater lake in terms of volume.
- (nautical) Unskilled as aseaman.
1858, R M Ballantyne,The Coral Island:“Mate,” said the captain in a low voice, “you talk like afresh-water sailor. I can only attribute this shyness to some strange delusion, for surely,”—his voice assumed a slightly sneering tone as he said this—“surely I am not to suppose that you have become soft-hearted![…]
- (US, economics)Neoclassical, in reference to themacroeconomics and economic departments near theGreat Lakes.
- 2012, John Quiggin,Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us, Princeton University Press (expanded paperback ed., 1st ed. from 2010),→ISBN, page 86.
Meanwhile, thefreshwater side of the dispute rapidly reverted to arguments from the nineteenth century, which had been debunked by Keynes and Irving Fisher.
- Synonym:sweetwater
consisting of fresh water
freshwater (countable anduncountable,pluralfreshwaters)
- (countable) A body offresh water.
1953,Publications of the Institute of Marine Science, volumes3-4, page100:Fossils with low Sr/Ca ratios indicating origin in afreshwater of a type which has a low Sr/Ca ratio:[…]
1967, Bent J. Muus,The Fauna of Danish Estuaries and Lagoons[1], page87:Smith (1958) found thatN. limnicola in Lake Merced, virtually afreshwater, had no paragnaths or at the most one on section I against the "normal" 1–2.
2013, Brian R. Moss,Ecology of Fresh Waters: A View for the Twenty-First Century:The chances of long-term preservation of fossils infreshwaters are minimal, forfreshwaters are readily disturbed and destroyed by drought on the land masses.
2015, Sophie Lake, Durwyn Liley, Robert Still,Britain's Habitats:Freshwaters are portrayed in many artforms, including books such as Kenneth Grahame's childrens'[sic] storyWind in the Willows.
- Alternative form offresh water.
1978, Roger M. Waller, John T. Turk, Robert J. Dingman, “Potential effects of deep-well waste disposal in western New York”, inGeological Survey Professional Paper,page21:Schematic diagram of the viscosity effect during the injection offreshwater.
2002, Friedrich A. Schott,Physical Oceanography of the Indian Ocean During WOCE[2], page1246:Above 200m, high-salinity water was being carried southward out of the Arabian Sea. This implies that most of thefreshwater was imported into the Arabian Sea in the upper layer.
2011, Guy Levy, P. Fine, A. Bar-Tal,Treated Wastewater in Agriculture[3]:Actual field data of Cl distribution in soil after irrigation with TWW andfreshwater were obtained in a field experiment in Israel (Feigin et al., 2005; Fine et al. 2007).
2014 April 20, Richard Conniff, “An evolutionary family drama”, inThe New York Times[4]:Alewives are anadromous fish: Born infreshwater, they spend their lives in the ocean, returning annually to their birthplaces to spawn.
