Rias

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A coastal inlet formed by the flooding of a river valley, characterized by a long, narrow, and often branched shape; a type of estuary created when rising sea levels submerge the lower course of a river; a scenic geographic feature commonly seen in maritime regions with drowned river valleys
2. An elongate bay resulting from the partial submergence of an unglaciated river valley, producing a complex coastal indentation; a drowned estuarine valley shaped by marine transgression; a natural harbor formed where river landscape is overtaken by sea water
3. A drowned river valley that forms a deep, narrow sea inlet with irregular coastline; a coastal formation developed by marine incursion into a river valley; a landform typical of areas where rising ocean levels flood the lower stretches of rivers creating inlets

Etymology: "Rias" is the plural of "ria," a term borrowed from Spanish, where "ría" names a river mouth widened by the sea. The best-known examples are along the northwest coast of Spain, in Galicia, whose Rías Baixas are a dense cluster of fjord-like inlets. English geographers adopted the Spanish word because the landform was first described on that coast, and the name stuck because no English word captured the shape so precisely. The Spanish term is probably connected to the Latin "rivus," meaning stream, though the exact route from Latin to Spanish is uncertain. The English word keeps the Galician sense of a flooded river valley rather than the general sense of any estuary.

Synonyms: fjords, inlets, estuaries, coastal bays