Synonyms:
feeder, tributary, confluent, affluent
Meaning: a branch that flows into the main stream
Usage examples
The McClure Glacier, once a tributary of the Lyell, is smaller.
Natural society begins at home and radiates over the world, as more and more things become tributary to our personal being.
Efforts were made through the winter to reach Vicksburg from the north by cutting canals, and by attempts to get in through the bayous and tributary streams of the great river.
It was arranged neatly, and by its side flowed the clear, cool waters of Young's Branch, a tributary of the little Manassas River. He walked briskly, crossed the brook, stepping from stone to stone, and entered the grounds of the Invincibles.
For many years the writer lived upon one of the rivers tributary to the Ohio and often made trips by steamboat up and down the Ohio River. Traveling along this river a close observer will be struck by the exactness of the stratifications in the rock and in the coal beds to be seen on each side of the river.
This, if you are well advised, you will guard against; and you will not think it dishonourable to submit to the greatest city in Hellas, when it makes you the moderate offer of becoming its tributary ally, without ceasing to enjoy the country that belongs to you; nor when you have the choice given you between war and security, will you be so blinded as to choose the worse.
All the rivers that are tributary to the Ohio, such as the Monongahela, the Alleghany, the Muskingum, the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Kentucky, the Wabash, the Miami, the Licking, the Scioto, the Big Sandy, the Kanawha, the Hocking, and the Great Beaver, besides numerous smaller streams, have their own valleys that have been worn away by the same process, and to a greater depth than they now appear to be.