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In the early 17th century, clerics began wearing long cloaks known as "pluvials" for protection against the rain during processions. The name of the cloak is based on the Latin word for "rain": "pluvia." By the mid-17th century, "pluvial" was also being used as an adjective meaning "of or relating to rain," as in "pluvial water." Later, in the 19th century, it made a splash in the geologic field as a word describing epochs having relatively high average rainfall and things caused or formed by rain, like "pluvial erosion" or "pluvial lakes."
Examples of pluvial in a Sentence
Meg Bernhard, The New Yorker, 15 Apr. 2024
Carla Burnside, an archaeologist with the refuge, notes that Malheur Lake and the refuge’s ponds are remnants of a large pluvial lake system that formed when rainwater filled the Harney Basin during wetter times thousands of years ago.
—April Reese, Discover Magazine, 8 Feb. 2016
The first trip back to Khorgo, in 2012, found evidence of the wet period, or pluvial, that Genghis rode to fame.
—Russ Juskalian, Discover Magazine, 28 May 2015
Instead of the rise of a khan, this modern pluvial overlapped with the country’s transition from Soviet satellite to market economy.
—Russ Juskalian, Discover Magazine, 28 May 2015
Grimm acknowledged the challenges the agency faces in terms of mapping pluvial flooding and the effects of a changing climate.
—Anchorage Daily News, 10 Dec. 2022
Cite this Entry
“Pluvial.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pluvial. Accessed 23 May. 2025.
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