WATERSHED • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Watershed

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/wˈɔtərʃˌɛd/ /wˈɑtərʃˌɛd/ Listen

noun

Watershed n.

The whole region or extent of country which contributes to the supply of a river or lake.

The line of division between two adjacent rivers or lakes with respect to the flow of water by natural channels into them; the natural boundary of a basin; called also divide and water parting.

A point in time marking an important transition between two situations, or phases of an activity; a turning point.

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Etymology of 'Watershed'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Watershed" Quotes from Famous Books

... books of which we have now so hastily spoken, you will be astonished at the freedom with which the original purposes of story-telling have been laid aside and passed by. Where are now the two lovers who descended the main watershed of all the Waverley novels, and all the novels that have tried to follow in their wake? Sometimes they are almost lost sight of before the solemn isolation of a man against the sea and sky, as in LES TRAVAILLEURS; sometimes, as in LES MISERABLES, ...

— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Lake and volcanoes and down the Tuolumne Canyon to Hetch Hetchy. Should Hetch Hetchy be submerged for a reservoir, as proposed, not only would it be utterly destroyed, but the sublime canyon way to the heart of the High Sierra would be hopelessly blocked and the great camping ground, as the watershed of a city drinking system, virtually would be closed to the public. So far as I have learned, few of all the thousands who have seen the park and seek rest and peace in it are in favor of this ...

— The Yosemite • John Muir

... unprecedented happenings took place in the Lower Third—happenings such as had never occurred before Honor's advent. Who but she would have thought of tilting two books together and emptying the inkpot on the top of them, when asked to describe a watershed? Yet she looked genuinely astonished when the vials of Miss Farrar's wrath descended upon her, and said almost reproachfully that she was only trying to give ...

— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... 26th, and continued to grow rapidly worse. The gauge at Point Bridge shewed twenty-six feet at eight o'clock, four feet above the danger point, and the rivers were rising steadily. Rain was falling throughout the western watershed, and every stream in western Pennsylvania assumed the ...

— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... the common rights of some distant cattle farm, and crossed then, not as now, by a decent road, but by a rough confused track-way, the remnant of an old Roman road from Clovelly dikes to Launceston. To the left it trended down towards a lower range of moors, which form the watershed of the heads of Torridge; and thither the two young men peered down over the expanse of bog and furze, which glittered for miles beneath the moon, one sheet of frosted silver, in the heavy ...

— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

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