valley

Etymology

From Middle English valey, valeye, from Anglo-Norman valey, Old French valee (compare French vallée), from Latin vallēs/vallis. Doublet of vlei. Displaced native dene, from Old English dene.

noun

1. An elongated depression cast between hills or mountains, often garnished with a river flowing through it.
   Most of the Himalayan rivers have been relatively untouched by dams near their sources. Now the two great Asian powers, India and China, are rushing to harness them as they cut through some of the world's deepest valleys. 2013-08-16, John Vidal, “Dams endanger ecology of Himalayas”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 10, page 8
2. An area which drains itself into a river.
3. Any structure resembling one, e.g. the interior angle formed by the intersection of two sloping roof planes.

verb

1. (intransitive, poetic, rare) To form the shape of a valley.
   Over Govino Bay, looking up from the water’s edge, the landscape resembles nothing so much as the hills above Genova, valleying into the sea, […] 1970, Charles Wright, The Grave of the Right Hand, Middletown, C.T.: Wesleyan University Press, page 25
   There must be something atavistic in the male blood that makes it rush, relent, rush with the peaks and the valleys, the roundness of Lia's breasts valleying and peaking, the stretch of her neck, the swaying of her hips. 2009, Gian Franco Romagnoli, The Bicycle Runner: A Memoir of Love, Loyalty, and the Italian Resistance, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Dunne Books, page 117