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basin

  ('sĭn) pronunciation
n.
    1. An open, shallow, usually round container used especially for holding liquids.
    2. The amount that such a vessel can hold.
  1. A washbowl; a sink.
    1. An artificially enclosed area of a river or harbor designed so that the water level remains unaffected by tidal changes.
    2. A small enclosed or partly enclosed body of water.
  2. A region drained by a single river system: the Amazon basin.
  3. Geology.
    1. A broad tract of land in which the rock strata are tilted toward a common center.
    2. A large, bowl-shaped depression in the surface of the land or ocean floor.

[Middle English, from Old French bacin, from Vulgar Latin *baccīnum, from *baccus, container, of Celtic origin.]

basinal ba'sin·al adj.
basined ba'sined (-sĭnd) adj.
 
 

A low-lying area which is wholly or largely surrounded by higher land. An example is Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada, which was formed by depression beneath the center of a continental ice sheet 18,000 years ago. Another example, the Qattara depression, is 150 mi (240 km) long and the largest of several wind-excavated basins of northern Egypt. Depressions in the ocean floor are also basins, such as the Canary Basin, west of northern Africa, or the Argentine Basin, east of Argentina. These basins occur in regions where cold, dense oceanic crust lies between the topographically elevated ocean ridges and the continental margins. See also Continental margin; Marine geology.

A drainage basin is the entire area drained by a river and its tributaries. Thus, the Mississippi Basin occupies most of the United States between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians. Interior drainage basins consist of depressions that drain entirely inward, without outlet to the sea. Examples may be quite small, such as the Salton Sea of southern California or the Dead Sea of central Asia. One of the most remarkable examples of an interior drainage basin is the Chad Basin in northern Africa, the center of which is occupied by Lake Chad. The fresh waters of the lake drain underground to feed oases in the lowlands 450 mi (720 km) to the northeast.

In the geologic sense, a basin is an area in which the continental crust has subsided and the depression has been filled with sediments. Such basins were interior drainage basins at the time of sediment deposition but need not be so today. As these basins subside, the layers of sediment are tilted toward the axis of maximum subsidence. Consequently, when the sedimentary layers are observed in cross section, their geometry is a record of the subsidence of the basin through time and contains clues about the origin of the basin.

The origin of geologic basins is a topic of continuing interest in both applied and basic geological studies. They contain most of the world's hydrocarbon reserves, and they are regarded as some of the best natural laboratories in which to understand the thermal and mechanical processes that operate deep in the interior of the Earth and that shape the Earth's surface.


 
Thesaurus: basin

noun

  1. The region drained by a river system: watershed. See territory.
  2. An area sunk below its surroundings: concavity, depression, dip, hollow, pit, sag, sink, sinkhole. See convex/concave.

 

n. an enclosed area of water where vessels can be moored: a yacht basin.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

 

A major relief depression, guided by structure, or formed by erosion. Basin and range describes a landscape where ridges made of asymmetric fault blocks alternate with lowland basins. In the USA, the basin and range country lies between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Mountains.

 


1. A somewhat shallow vessel for holding water (or the like).
2. A shallow tank or natural or artificial depression containing water.


 
Wikipedia: basin (disambiguation)

Basin may mean:

  • Drainage basin, a hydrological basin or catchment basin, a region of land where water drains downhill into a specified body of water
  • Tarim Basin, located in Xinjiang, China and is one of the largest drainage basins in the world.
  • Sedimentary basin, a low and usually sinking region that is filled with sediments from adjacent positive areas
  • Structural basin, in geology, referring to the basin-shaped warping of underlying bedrock in a region
  • Depression (geology), a landform lower than the surrounding area, such as the Kalahari Basin
  • Oceanic basin, anywhere on Earth that is covered by seawater
  • A downdropped fault block, or graben, which fill with sediments
  • Wash basin, a bowl (vessel) designed to contain water for the purpose of cleaning hands and other minor ablutions; see also sink
  • Pudding basin, a kitchen utensil of a rounded internal form and wider at its open top
  • Basin, or dock (maritime), used for the reception of boats, in which the water level is maintained; also called a tidal basin or canal basin
  • Basin of attraction, in the mathematics of nonlinear systems

In places:


 
Translations: Translations for: Basin

Dansk (Danish)
n. - håndvask, kumme

Nederlands (Dutch)
wasbak, waterbekken, kom, vijver

Français (French)
n. - cuvette, bassine, bol, jatte, lavabo, cuvette (WC), vasque (fontaine), (Géog) bassin, cuvette (d'une vallée), bassin (d'un port)

Deutsch (German)
n. - Wasserbecken, Becken

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - λεκάνη, γαβάθα, κεσές, νιπτήρας, γούρνα, στέρνα, λεκανοπέδιο, φυσικό λιμάνι, κοιλάδα ποταμού

Italiano (Italian)
stagno, bacino, vasca, catinella, lavabo, lavandino

Português (Portuguese)
n. - bacia (f) (Geo.), dique (m), vaso (m), pelve (f) (Anat.)

Русский (Russian)
раковина, водоем, котлован

Español (Spanish)
n. - balsa, estanque, cuenca, barreño, lavabo, jofaina, palangana

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - fat, handfat, skål, hamnbassäng, docka, flodområde

中文(简体) (Chinese (Simplified))
盆, 水池, 盆地

中文(繁體) (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 盆, 水池, 盆地

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 물동이, 한 동이 가득한 분량, 웅덩이

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 鉢, 洗面器, 骨盤, 鉢一杯, 盆地, 流域, ため池, 水たまり, 陸地に囲まれた港

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) صحن, حوض‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮כיור, קערה, בקעה, אגן‬


 
 

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Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
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Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
US Military Dictionary. The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military. Copyright © 2001, 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Geography Dictionary. A Dictionary of Geography. Copyright © Susan Mayhew 1992, 1997, 2004. All rights reserved.  Read more
Architecture. McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. Copyright © 2003 by McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Basin" Read more
Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved.  Read more

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