stream

v. flow; pour out from; arrive in large numbers; flow freely; blow, wave; emit beams of light

n. brook, creek, river; flow of water or other liquid; constant outpouring

A stream, brook, beck, burn, creek, crick, kill, rill, syke, bayou, or run is a body of water with a current, confined within a bed and banks. Streams are important as conduits in the water cycle, instruments in aquifer recharge, and corridors for fish and wildlife migration. The biological habitat in the immediate vicinity of a stream is called a riparian zone. Given the status of the ongoing Holocene extinction event, streams play an important corridor role in connecting fragmented habitats and thus in conserving biodiversity. Stream is also an umbrella term used in the scientific community for all flowing natural waters, regardless of size. The study of streams and waterways in general is known as surface hydrology and is a core element of environmental geography.
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Noun
1. a natural body of running water flowing on or under the earth
(synonym) watercourse
(hypernym) body of water, water
(hyponym) branch
(part-meronym) ford, crossing
(derivation) well out
2. dominant course (suggestive of running water) of successive events or ideas; "two streams of development run through American history"; "stream of consciousness"; "the flow of thought"; "the current of history"
(synonym) flow, current
(hypernym) course, line
3. a steady flow (usually from natural causes); "the raft floated downstream on the current"; "he felt a stream of air"
(synonym) current
(hypernym) flow, flowing
(hyponym) tidal flow, tidal current
(derivation) well out
4. the act of flowing or streaming; continuous progression
(synonym) flow
(hypernym) motion, movement, move
(hyponym) spill, spillage, release
(derivation) well out
5. something that resembles a flowing stream in moving continuously; "a stream of people emptied from the terminal"; "the museum had planned carefully for the flow of visitors"
(synonym) flow
(hypernym) motion
(derivation) pour, swarm, teem, pullulate
Verb
1. to extend, wave or float outward, as if in the wind; "their manes streamed like stiff black pennants in the wind"
(hypernym) float, drift, be adrift, blow
(derivation) flow
2. exude profusely; "She was streaming with sweat"; "His nose streamed blood"
(hypernym) exude, exudate, transude, ooze out, ooze
3. move in large numbers; "people were pouring out of the theater"; "beggars pullulated in the plaza"
(synonym) pour, swarm, teem, pullulate
(hypernym) crowd, crowd together
(hyponym) spill over, spill out, pour out
(derivation) flow
4. rain heavily; "Put on your rain coat-- it's pouring outside!"
(synonym) pour, pelt, rain cats and dogs, rain buckets
(hypernym) rain, rain down
(hyponym) sheet
5. flow freely and abundantly; "Tears streamed down her face"
(synonym) well out
(hypernym) run, flow, feed, course
(hyponym) spin
(derivation) flow

(v. t.)
To unfurl.
  

(v. t.)
To send forth in a current or stream; to cause to flow; to pour; as, his eyes streamed tears.
  

(v. t.)
To mark with colors or embroidery in long tracts.
  

(v. i.)
To pour out, or emit, a stream or streams.
  

(v. i.)
To issue or flow in a stream; to flow freely or in a current, as a fluid or whatever is likened to fluids; as, tears streamed from her eyes.
  

(v. i.)
To issue in a stream of light; to radiate.
  

(v. i.)
To extend; to stretch out with a wavy motion; to float in the wind; as, a flag streams in the wind.
  

(n.)
Current; drift; tendency; series of tending or moving causes; as, the stream of opinions or manners.
  

(n.)
Anything issuing or moving with continued succession of parts; as, a stream of words; a stream of sand.
  

(n.)
A current of water or other fluid; a liquid flowing continuously in a line or course, either on the earth, as a river, brook, etc., or from a vessel, reservoir, or fountain; specifically, any course of running water; as, many streams are blended in the Mississippi; gas and steam came from the earth in streams; a stream of molten lead from a furnace; a stream of lava from a volcano.
  

(n.)
A continued current or course; as, a stream of weather.
  

(n.)
A beam or ray of light.
  

["STREAM: A Scheme Language for Formally Describing Digital Circuits", C.D. Kloos in PARLE: Parallel Architectures and Languages Europe, LNCS 259, Springer 1987].
(1995-01-30)

1. <communications> An abstraction referring to any flow of data from a source (or sender, producer) to a single sink (or receiver, consumer). A stream usually flows through a channel of some kind, as opposed to packets which may be addressed and routed independently, possibly to multiple recipients. Streams usually require some mechanism for establishing a channel or a "connection" between the sender and receiver.
2. In the C language's buffered input/ouput library functions, a stream is associated with a file or device which has been opened using fopen. Characters may be read from (written to) a stream without knowing their actual source (destination) and buffering is provided transparently by the library routines.
3. Confusingly, Sun have called their modular device driver mechanism "STREAMS".
4. In IBM's AIX operating system, a stream is a full-duplex processing and data transfer path between a driver in kernel space and a process in user space.
[IBM AIX 3.2 Communication Programming Concepts, SC23-2206-03].
5. <communications> streaming.
6.  lazy list.
(1996-11-06)