barranco

Borrowed from Spanish barranco.

barranco (plural barrancos or barrancoes)

1. A gully, gulch, or ravine.
   • 1867, The Month: A Magazine and Review, page 344:

     We remounted at 3 p.m., and for three hours and a half we rode down a goat-track which resembled the depths of a barranco. It was the dry bed of a river, with rocks balanced upon each other […]

• Hyphenation: bar‧ran‧co

barranco m (plural barrancos)

1. a dirt cliff, especially one at the edge of a river or road

   Synonyms: barranca, ribanceira

2. gully (trench, ravine or narrow channel which was worn by water flow)

   Synonym: (Brazil) voçoroca

• barranca
• barrancoso

Uncertain; maybe of pre-Roman origin. Cognate with Catalan barranc; cf. barra (“clay, mud”).

• IPA^(key): /baˈranko/ [baˈrãŋ.ko]
• Rhymes: -anko
• Syllabification: ba‧rran‧co

barranco m (plural barrancos)

1. gully, gulch, ravine, barranca

   Synonyms: cañada, cañón, quiebra, quebrada

   • 1907 January, Harold Bindloss, chapter 7, in The Dust of Conflict, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: McLeod & Allen, →OCLC:

     A little fire burned in the hollow of the dusty barranco, a clear red fire of the kind that gives little light and makes no smoke, and its pale glow showed but feebly against the rock behind.

• “barranco”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024