Synonyms of rill

rill

noun

ˈril 

as in brook

a natural body of running water smaller than a river

there are a few tiny fish in the rill

Synonyms & Similar Words

• brook
• creek
• stream
• rivulet
• brooklet
• tributary
• streamlet
• canal
• beck
• burn
• runnel
• bayou
• runoff
• bourn
• gill
• fresh
• run
• freshet
• arroyo
• wash
• slough
• coulee
• runlet
• channel
• watercourse
• waterway
• billabong
• race
• cutoff
• kill
• millrace
• millstream
• influent
• distributary
• cut
• confluent
• branch
• affluent
• gut

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of rill

Those residents might also like to see the name of Indian Creek, another rill which traverses the county, given a new designation. — Charles Selle, Chicago Tribune, 30 Mar. 2026

His verses evoke sacred rivers, fertile grounds and gardens bright with sinuous rills—a lyrical world beyond the inauspicious reality of its start-point. — Natalie Hoberman, Forbes, 22 Feb. 2025

These rills form as the desiccating winds of the Sahara blow tiny bits of sand across the rock. — Bethany Brookshire, Scientific American, 27 June 2024

Now a little rill of wavelets across the surface of the flood was the only thing that marked the river’s usual borders. — Brooke Jarvis, New York Times, 31 May 2023

What had looked like a dense palm grove from above is actually a lush network of wheat, zucchini, mint, and tomato plots fed by a network of rills that carry water from a natural pool to the crops below. — Christopher Garis, Condé Nast Traveler, 12 Jan. 2022

Over millions of years, the river and its tributaries have carved a fanlike rill of dramatic canyons out of the ancient sediments of the Mesa Verde tablelands, a maze of vertiginous stone walls. — Jeff Wise, Discover Magazine, 19 May 2010