[a. Fr. alluvion, ad. L. alluviōn-em a washing against, inundation; f. al- = ad- to + -luvio washing, f. lu-ĕre to wash.]
1. The wash or flow of the sea against the shore, or of a river on its banks.
1536. Bellenden, Cron. Scotl. (1821), I. Pref. 48. Ane gret tre was brocht, be alluvion and flux of the see, to land.
1665. Marvell, Poems, Wks. 1776, III. 288.
| Holland … the off-scouring of the British sand,… | |
| Or what by th’ ocean’s slow alluvion fell, | |
| Of shipwreck’d cockle and the muscle-shell. |
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., s.v., Great alterations are made … by alluvions of the sea.
1851. Sir F. Palgrave, Norm. & Eng., I. 321. The isle … has not been obliterated by alluvion.
2. An inundation or overflow; a flood, especially when the water is charged with much matter in suspension.
1550. Nicolls, Thucydides, 92 (R.). Of the whyche alluuyons and overflowynges the earthquakes (as I thynke) were the cause.
1644. Howell, Lett. (1753), 456. Slow rivers, by insensible alluvions, take in and let out the waters that feed them.
1830. Lyell, Princ. Geol., I. 349. A current of mud is produced…. So late as the 27th of October, 1822, one of these alluvions descended the cone of Vesuvius.
3. The matter deposited by a flood or inundation.
1731. Bailey, Alluvion, an accession or accretion along the sea-shore, or the banks of large rivers by tempests or inundations.
1833. Lyell, Princ. Geol., III. 60. They are, for the most part, preserved in detached alluvions covering the emerged land.
1834. F. Shoderl, trans. Hugo’s Hunchb., I. 99. Every wave of time superinduces its alluvion, every generation deposits its stratum upon the structure, every individual brings his stone.
4. esp. The matter gradually deposited by a river. = ALLUVIUM.
1779. Mann, in Phil. Trans., LXIX. 602. The matters, so carried off, will be thrown against the opposite bank of the river … and produce a new ground, called an alluvion.
1834. Bancroft, Hist. U.S., I. xiii. 423. A hardy race multiplied along the alluvion of the streams.
1841. Catlin, North Amer. Ind. (1844), I. iii. 19. Spreading the deepest and richest alluvion over the surface of its meadows.
5. Law. The formation of new land by the slow and imperceptible action of flowing water.
1751. Hume, Ess., Justice (1817), II. 483. The accessions which are made to land bordering upon rivers, follow the land, say the civilians, provided it be made by what they call alluvion, that is insensibly and imperceptibly.
1880. Muirhead, Gaius, II. § 70. That becomes ours which is brought to us by alluvion.
