sb. (Also with hyphen.)
1. Shallow or shoal water; water with breakers or foam, as in shallows or rapids on the sea or a river. Also attrib.
1586. Harrison, England, I. xi. 47, in Holinshed. The more that this riuer is put by of hir right course, the more the water must of necessitie swell with the white waters which run downe from the land.
1727. E. Laurence, Duty of Steward, 19. The … great advantages which the Meadows near Rivers might receive by being flooded with Freshes and White-water.
1803. Naval Chron., IX. 440. The Bahama pilots make a distinction of white water and ocean water, applying the former term to the shallow banks contiguous to many of the islands.
1861. Hulme, trans. Moquin-Tandon, II. III. iii. 92. The water by its [sc. the whale’s] progress being somewhat disturbed, is known by the whalers under the name of ‘White water.’
1884. ‘H. Collingwood,’ Under Meteor Flag, xi. Keep a cool head, for it seems to me that you’ve white water all round you, whichever way you shape a course.
1902. S. E. White, Blazed Trail, xlvii. Men with a reputation as ‘white-water birlers’—men afraid of nothing. Ibid. (1911), Rules of Game, I. xiii. ‘Why won’t he make a good riverman?’… ‘A good whitewater man has to start younger.’
2. Water mixed with oatmeal or bran, as a medicinal drink for horses.
1737. Bracken, Farriery Impr. (1757), II. 202. Let him drink warm Water with Oat-meal, or what we term White-water.
3. A name for dropsy in sheep.
1801. Farmer’s Mag., Nov., 372. The disorder … which in some places is called the blood or white water.
Hence White-water v. intr. (Naut. colloq.), of a whale, to splash with the flukes so as to make the water white with foam.
1891. Cent. Dict., s.v., There she white waters!
