valley

noun

1. An elongated depression cast between hills or mountains, often with a river flowing through it.

   “The Indus River valley was the site of an ancient civilization.”

   “[I]t sank down through the air and poured over the ground in a manner rather liquid than gaseous, abandoning the hills, and streaming into the valleys and ditches and water-courses even as I have heard the carbonic acid gas that pours from volcanic clefts is wont to do.”

   “The El Dorado-Searchlight area is geologically a north-south trending orogenous zone, paralleled on the east by the valley of the Colorado, and by an alluvial valley on the west.”

   “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.”

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.

   “These hues of red rose and green and pale green, ruffled and pouted in the billowy white of the dress ballooning and valleying softly, like a yacht before the sail bends low; […]”

   “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, […]”

   “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.”

name

1. (countable)A surname from landforms.
2. (countable, uncountable)A placename:
3. (countable, uncountable)A placename:
4. (countable, uncountable)A placename:
5. (countable, uncountable)A placename:
6. (countable, uncountable)A placename:
7. (abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis)Ellipsis of the San Fernando Valley: a valley of southern California, United States.

   “The Valley is getting downright cosmopolitan, but it’s unlikely the region will ever completely morph into a hip haven.”

   “She's in school paying for tuition / Doing porn in the Valley”

8. (abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis)Ellipsis of Silicon Valley.

   “The sunshine, the abundance of U.S. government research grants, the willingness of Stanford University to let its professors walk out the door with their inventions and start companies, the presence of a counterculture intent on arming the masses with new technology—all made the Valley the place to be for people with a knack for building new technology.”

   “Since the late 1950s, when perhaps six unions were active in the Valley, the trade associations and individual firms have made it one of their primary missions to destroy all vestiges of worker autonomy, the most visible manifestation of which is the union.”

   “The company had merged with Sequoia [Capital]-backed X.com, and [Michael] Moritz had insisted on a grown-up CEO to run the combined company. The offer that came back from investors was a $200 million round at a $500 million pre-money valuation. Sounds rich, right? The PayPalers were insulted. It was the height of the bubble; they all thought PayPal was the next great Valley company and should be worth far more than that.”