urstromtal

Unadapted borrowing from German Urstromtal, from ur- (prefix meaning ‘original; primitive’) + Strom (“large river; stream”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *srew- (“to flow; stream”)) + Tal (“valley”) (ultimate etymology uncertain, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *dʰól(h₂)os).

The plural form urstromtäler is also an unadapted borrowing from German Urstromtäler.

• Singular:
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈʊəstɹəʊmˌtɑːl/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

  • (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈʊɹstɹoʊmˌtɑl/

  • Audio (General American):

    (file)

  • Hyphenation: ur‧strom‧tal
• Plural (urstromtäler):
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈʊəstɹəʊmˌtɛlə/
  • (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈʊɹstɹoʊmˌtɛləɹ/
  • Hyphenation: ur‧strom‧täl‧er

urstromtal (plural urstromtäler or urstromtals)

1. (geology) A broad glacial valley formed during an ice age by meltwater flowing roughly parallel to the ice margin.
   • 1950, Margaret Reid Shackleton, Europe: A Regional Geography, London: Longmans, Green and Co., →OCLC, page 263:

     On the southern margin the plateau falls to a sandy outwash plain which merges into the zone of urstromtäler.

   • 1961, Geomorphological Abstracts, number 29, London: K. M. Clayton, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 23:

     This high urstromtal is drained in part by the Notec and Warta rivers; it varies greatly in width with basin-shaped widenings and narrow stretches between, but can be traced for an east-west distance of some 400 miles from the Vistula to the Elbe.

   • 1968, International Geological Congress: Report of the Twenty-third Session, Czechoslovakia: Proceedings of Section 10: Tertiary/Quaternary Boundary, Prague: Academia, →OCLC, page 124:

     Certain deposits occur in the central areas of Poland, within the urstromtal of the river Vistula (Ochle deposit near Konin) and the urstromtal of the Notec river.

   • 1988, Geoffrey Parker, “A Geopolitical Model of Dominance”, in The Geopolitics of Domination, London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, pages 64–65:

     Thus the Ottomans moved to the Sea of Marmara, the Castilians down the westward flowing rivers from the Meseta to the Atlantic, the Austrians into the Pannonian basin and the Prussians eastwards along the urstromtal to the Oder.

   • 1989, Frank O. Ahnert, editor, Landforms and Landform Evolution in West Germany (Catena Supplement; 15), Cremlingen-Destedt, Lower Saxony: Catena Verlag, →ISBN, page 90, column 1:

     The valley of the lower Elbe was thought to have originated during the Weichsel glacial when it formed the urstromtal segment that drained the runoff from the ice margin in the north, and also the eastern urstromtäler of the Weichsel glacial, towards the North Sea.

   • 2022, Barbara Woronko, Maciej Dąbski, “The North European Plain”, in Marc Oliva, Daniel Nývlt, José M. Fernández-Fernández, editors, Periglacial Landscapes of Europe, Cham, Zug, Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland, →DOI, →ISBN, page 281:

     Characteristic landforms include: morainic uplands, sandar plains, subglacial valleys, east-to-west running sets of end moraine ridges (in Jutland the direction is changing to north-south) and urstromtals (ice-marginal valleys), which transported meltwaters along the ice sheet front in the general inclination of the area—towards WNW.

• Urstromtal

• urstromtal on Wikipedia.Wikipedia