a. [f. STREAM sb. + -Y1.]
1. Abounding in or full of running streams.
† a. of the bottom of the sea. Obs.
14[?]. Sailing Directions (Hakl. Soc., 1889), 21. Betwene Cille and Huschant there is grete stremy grounde with white shellis.
1574. W. Bourne, Regim. Sea, 60. You shall finde streamie ground, and dentes in the talow.
1625. Purchas, Pilgrims, I. V. vii. 647. From Linga vnto this place we had … twentie fathom, as wee supposed, streamy ground.
b. of a district, country.
a. 1718. Prior, 1st Hymn of Callimachus, 23. Arcadia, (However streamy now) adust and dry, Deny’d the Goddess Water.
1799. Campbell, Pleas. Hope, II. 103. His path shall be where streamy mountains swell Their shadowy grandeur o’er the narrow dell.
1806. J. Grahame, Birds Scot., 1. Fair Scotia’s streamy vales.
1833. Blackw. Mag., XXXIII. 689. Beauty … holds her court in the streamy wilderness.
2. Of water, etc.: Flowing in a stream, running.
c. 1586. C’tess Pembroke, Ps. XCVIII. iii. You streamy rivers clapp, your swymming hands.
1825. Brockett, N. C. Gloss., Slack, a long pool in a streamy river.
fig. 1731. A. Hill, Advice to Poets, iii. No—like thy own Ulysses, make no Stay: Shun Monsters—and pursue thy streamy Way.
1804. Coleridge, Anima Poetae (1895), 65. The streamy nature of the associative faculty.
b. Of hair, etc.: Flowing.
1813. W. Taylor, in Monthly Mag., XXXVI. 332. With streamy golden hair.
1817. Keats, Sleep & Poetry, 127. A car And steeds with streamy manes.
3. Of the nature of, having the appearance of, or issuing in, a stream. Also, emitting streams (of light).
1718. Pope, Iliad, XIII. 1014. His nodding Helm emits a streamy Ray.
a. 1720. J. Hughes, Poems, Ecstasy, ix. The nightly-wakeful swain … marks no stars, but o’er his head Beholds the streamy twilight spread, Like distant morning in the skies.
a. 1814. Gonzanga, IV. vi. in New Brit. Theatre, III. 139. Blaze on, ye streamy flames of vivid glare!
1842. Penny Cycl., XXIII. 106/1. The result is a streamy or imperfectly concentric stratification.
1869. Proctor, Ess. Astron., xxv. (1872), 320. On a closer inspection, however, we recognise in the northern cluster [of nebulæ] a decidedly streamy character.
Hence Streaminess.
1869. Proctor, Ess. Astron., xxv. (1872), 319. The northern map accords better with this view than the southern; but even in the former there is an irregularity in the clustering, an occasional evidence of streaminess, [etc.].
