Word.ws English Dictionary

catadupe

catadupe noun: waterfall; cataract.

Noun

catadupe (plural catadupes)

  1. Waterfall; cataract.
    • Yet was not this all; for hither to the north boiled the majestic cataract in unimaginable grandiloquence, and thither to the south sparkled the gentle catadupe in serene and incandescent tranquillity, whilst far and near the halcyon brooklet flowed between!1938, Mark Twain (Bernard DeVoto, ed.), Letters from the Earth, page 110
    • It happens oftentimes that in the church of God, where the waters of Siloam should run with silence, there is nothing heard but the tempestuous roaring of some gulf or catadupe.1978, Daniel Tuvill, John L. Lievsay, Essays Politic and Moral and Essays Moral and Theological, →ISBN, page 129

Proper noun capitalized: Catadupe

Catadupe

  1. (obsolete) A city on the Nile river, a few miles above Aga-nagara; the site of the first cataract of the Nile.
  2. An inhabitant of this city.
    • Catadupes never heard the roaring of the fall of Nilus, because the noiſe was ſo familiar unto them.1780 [1607], The Miseries Of Inforced Marriage, page 189
    • The inhabitants of Atures and Maypures, whatever the missionaries may have asserted in their works, are not more struck with deafness by the noise of the great cataracts, than the Catadupes of the Nile.1819, The Leeds Correspondent

Forms of catadupe

pluralcatadupes

Origin of catadupe

From French catadupe, from Latin Catadūpa, name of the first cataract of the Nile, from Ancient Greek Κατάδουποι (Katádoupoi); see Catadupe for more.

The place name is from Latin Catadūpa, from Ancient Greek Κατάδουποι (Katádoupoi), "commonly derived from καταδουπέω (katadoupéō), as if downroars" (see κατα- (kata-, “down”), δουπέω (doupéō, “to thud”)). (The people are from Latin Catadūpi.)

Questions about catadupe

What does catadupe mean?
Catadupe means waterfall; cataract.
What part of speech is catadupe?
Catadupe can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of catadupe?
The plural of catadupe is catadupes.

Words near catadupe in the dictionary

  1. catadrome
  2. catadromes
  3. catadromous
  4. catadromy
  5. Catadupa
  6. catadupe
  7. catadupes
  8. catafalco
  9. catafalcoes
  10. catafalque
  11. catafalques

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: catadupe (page history and authors); Catadupe (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.

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