Word.ws English Dictionary

lavant

lavant noun: a shallow or more or less intermittent spring, or the stream of water (bourne) which feeds and springs forth from such a spring.

Noun

lavant (plural lavants)

  1. (UK, dialectal) A shallow or more or less intermittent spring, or the stream of water (bourne) which feeds and springs forth from such a spring.
    • Lavants, are land springs, which break out much, on the downs of Sussex, Hants, and Wilts. The country people say, that when the Lavants rise, corn will be dear; meaning, that when the earth is so glutted with water as to send[…]1815, James Dallaway, A History of the Western Division of the County of Sussex: Including the Rapes of Chichester, Arundel, and Bramber, with the City and Diocese of Chichester, page 112
    • In this part of Hampshire a bourn is called a lavant, and after long internals when a lavant rises at Hambledon, some of the springs rise from, or quite close to[,] the churchyard itself.1891, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, page 15
  2. (UK, dialectal) A violent flow or rush of water.
    • How it did rain! It ran down the street in a lavant.

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Lavant

Lavant

  1. A civil parish in Chichester district, West Sussex, England (OS grid ref SU8508).
  2. A minor river in West Sussex.
  3. A community in Lanark Highlands township, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Lavant

Lavant

  1. A municipality in East Tyrol, Austria.

Examples of lavant in a sentence

  • No permanent stream flows through this vallet, but eastward of the village a remarkable "lavant" occurs.1894, Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society, Proceedings, page 54:
  • […] an intermittant stream (locally known as a "lavant," but in many parts called a "bourne") appears in the valley bottom […]1928, Water and Water Engineering, page 316:
  • The cold wet weather continued unabated during February and the underground springs ('lavants') began to break out of the chalk hills ominously early.2007, Richard Mabey, Gilbert White: A Biography of the Author of The Natural History of Selborne, University of Virginia Press, →ISBN, page...

Forms of lavant

plurallavants
alternative formlevant

Origin of lavant

Uncertain. Possibly from Middle English *lavand, *lavant, lavande, present participle of Middle English laven (“to stream, pour out a stream, wash”), from Old English lafian (“to pour water on, wash, lave, bathe, ladle out”), equivalent to lave + -and; or from Old French lavant, present participle of laver (“to wash”). See lave.

Compare lavant (“ephemeral spring”).

Compare Slovene Labotnica.

Words formed from lavant

  • East Lavant
  • Mid Lavant

Questions about lavant

What does lavant mean?
Lavant means a shallow or more or less intermittent spring, or the stream of water (bourne) which feeds and springs forth from such a spring.
How do you use lavant in a sentence?
No permanent stream flows through this vallet, but eastward of the village a remarkable "lavant" occurs.
What part of speech is lavant?
Lavant can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of lavant?
The plural of lavant is lavants.

Words near lavant in the dictionary

  1. lavandulol
  2. lavandulyl
  3. lavanduquinocin
  4. lavani
  5. Lavans
  6. lavant
  7. lavants
  8. Lavanya
  9. lavaproof
  10. Lavar
  11. lavaret

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lavant (page history and authors); Lavant (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: “lavant.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lavant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.