Inver

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The mouth of a river where it joins a larger river, a loch or the sea, a term common in Scottish place names
2. A Scottish word for the point where a stream empties into another body of water, often found in place names
3. Denotes the confluence where a river meets the sea or a loch, drawn from Scottish Gaelic and used in many localities

Etymology: Scotland's map is full of "inver", a Gaelic word meaning "river-mouth", the place where a river meets a larger body of water. The word is not a standalone English term but a place-name element. Inverness, for instance, sits where the River Ness flows out of Loch Ness into the Moray Firth, so the town's name literally describes its location at the river's mouth. Inveraray, on Loch Fyne, takes its name from the River Aray, which enters the loch at that point. The element comes from Scottish Gaelic "inbhir", which is related to the Welsh "aber", meaning the same thing. Those two words are evidence of a shared Celtic vocabulary for estuaries, and the same root appears in many Welsh place names beginning with "Aber", such as Aberystwyth. In Scotland, the element was widely used in naming settlements, so a traveller could often tell from the name alone that a river met the sea or a loch there.