Word.ws English Dictionary

astream

/əˈstɹiːm/

astream adjective: streaming, flowing (of a liquid, object blown by wind, light, sound).

Adjective

astream (not comparable)

  1. Streaming, flowing (of a liquid, object blown by wind, light, sound).
    • The biker sped by, hair astream from under her helmet.
    • Glorious the northern lights astream;1763, Christopher Smart, A Song to David, London: Elkin Mathews, published 1901, page 34
  2. Having something flowing from, down or along it; covered (with something flowing).
    • Past the finish line, she doubled over panting, her hair astream with sweat.
    • There the swishing tailed cows stand with mouths all astream,1887, Miller Hageman, “The Chippie at the Spring”, in Bird-Songs Translated into Words, Brooklyn, NY, page 72

Adverb

astream (not comparable)

  1. In, into, on, onto or along a stream (or other watercourse).
    • I prefer to clean the fish I catch right away, while I’m astream.
    • And pushed the laden raft astream1883, Edmund Clarence Stedman, “The Hand of Lincoln”, in Poems Now First Collected, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, published 1897, page 5
  2. In line with the stream.
    • Icebergs should always be passed to one side to avoid the detached fragments, lying low in the water, which are often found astream of the berg in masses sufficiently great to stave in the bows of the strongest ship.1892, E. F. Qualtrough, The Sailor’s Handy Book, New York: Scribner, Section 3, p. 145
    • After she was once fairly astream of her drogue she shipped no more heavy water.1896, Claud Worth diary entry dated 24 September, 1896, in Yacht Cruising, J.D. Potter, 1910, cited in J.O. Coote (ed.), The Norton Book of the Sea, New York: Norton, 1989, p. 138

Examples of astream in a sentence

  • […] as a finger of smoke / Astream over woodland1892, George Meredith, “The Empty Purse”, in Poems, London: Macmillan, page 9:
  • The charioteer […] / His left hand lopped […] / Bronze reins astream in his right,2010, Seamus Heaney, “Chanson d’aventure”, in Human Chain, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 14:
  • […] he twisted his head sharply and stared at the dark windows astream with rain,1967, John Farris, King Windom, New York: Trident Press, Part 1, Chapter 30, p. 372:
  • the causeways to Miami Beach all astream with traffic1984, Jan Morris, “What They Had to Offer”, in Journeys, Oxford University Press, page 101:

Origin of astream

From a- + stream.

Words that rhyme with astream

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about astream

What does astream mean?
Astream means streaming, flowing (of a liquid, object blown by wind, light, sound).
How do you use astream in a sentence?
[…] as a finger of smoke / Astream over woodland
What part of speech is astream?
Astream can be an adjective or an adverb.
How do you pronounce astream?
Astream is pronounced /əˈstɹiːm/.

Words near astream in the dictionary

  1. Astravyets
  2. astray
  3. AstraZeneca
  4. AstraZenecas
  5. Astrea
  6. astream
  7. astreated
  8. astretch
  9. astrexine
  10. Astria
  11. astrict

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: astream (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “astream.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/astream. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.