Also 8 erron. fresh shot. [f. FRESH sb.1 + -ET; or possibly a. OF. freschet adj., dim. of freis FRESH a. (cf. fontaine frechette, 16th c. in Godef.).]
1. A small stream of fresh water. Cf. FRESH sb.1 3. Obs. exc. poet.
1598. Hakluyt, Voy., I. 113. All the foresayde plaine is most commodiously watered with certaine freshets distilling from the said mountaines, all which do fall into the lake.
1611. Sir T. Dale, in A. Brown, Genesis U. S. (1890), I. 507. A Spanish Carvall came into our River fitted with a shallop necessarie and propper to discover freshetts, Rivers and Creekes.
1674. Josselyn, Voy. New Eng., 160. Replenished with Orchards and Gardens, well watered with springs and small freshets.
1827. Carlyle, German Romance, IV. xiii. 215. He [the Traveller] comes over fields and pasturages; skirts, on the dry lea, many a little freshet.
1887. Bowen, Virg. Æneid, I. 168.
| Facing the deep is a cave inlaid in a precipice; sweet | |
| Fountain freshets within it, and stone unhewn for a seat. |
2. A stream or rush of fresh water flowing into the sea. Cf. FRESH sb.1 2.
1596. L. Keymis, in Hakluyt’s Voy. (1600), III. 673. The freshets when they take their ordinarie course of ebbe, doe grow strong and swift, setting directly off to sea against the wind.
1721. Bailey, Fresh Shot … is when any great River falls into the Sea.
1871. Tyndall, Fragm. Sc. (1879), I. vii. 238. He hugged the cross freshets instead of striking out into the smoother water.
3. A flood or overflowing of a river caused by heavy rains or melted snow.
1654. E. Johnson, Wond.-wrkg. Provid. (1867), 45. Her [the Sixth Church of Christ] scituation is neere to a River, whose strong freshet at breaking up of Winter filleth all her Bankes, and with a furious Torrent ventes it selfe into the Sea.
1784. M. Cutler, in Life, Jrnls. & Corr. (1888), I. 100. The freshet in the river in his plantation was so sudden that cattle on his intervale were in danger of being drowned.
1837. C. T. Jackson, 1st Rep. Geol. Maine, 108–9. Alluvium is produced by the continual action of rain, springs and rivers, upon the loose materials found on the hills and mountains, which materials are carried by running water to the plains, and are deposited along river courses, especially during freshets.
1878. Huxley, Physiography, 142. In a flood, or freshet, the water is always highly charged with detritus; and, on the overflow of the river, some of this is deposited as a fine layer of mud evenly spread over the flooded soil.
transf. and fig. 1858. O. W. Holmes, Aut. Breakf.-t. (1883), 196. After a feast of reason and a regular ‘freshet’ of soul which had lasted two or three hours, he read them these verses.
1872. ‘Mark Twain,’ Innoc. Abr., xvii. 116. I scanned every female face that passed, and it seemed to me that all were handsome. I never saw such a freshet of loveliness before.
1886. Mrs. Phelps, Burglars in Par., ix. 155. Freshets of circulars poured over the land. The reward was gradually increased at about the rate of a dollar a day.
attrib. 1865. M. C. Harris, St. Philip’s, xxiv. 173. There were rough bridges, occasionally mended by a log, oftener left gaping from freshet-time to freshet-time.
1875. in Buckland, Log-bk., 364. It is always in a freshet season that the Channel cuts down the Frampton side.
1895. J. Winsor, Mississ. Basin, 14. Evans, on his maps, puts the ordinary freshet rise at twenty feet, and says that the stream scarcely ever overflows its upright banks.
Hence Freshet v. trans., to flood as with a freshet; in quot. fig.
1865. Mrs. Whitney, Gayworthys, II. 179. The winds came and fresheted all the waysides and woodpaths with a down-pour of colour.
