Word.ws English Dictionary

stream

/ˈstɹiːm/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Scotland/ˈstɾim/

stream noun: a small river; a large creek; a body of moving water confined by banks.

stream: a small river; a large creek; a body of moving water confined by banks
Image: Photographer: Mg-k, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

stream (plural streams)

  1. A small river; a large creek; a body of moving water confined by banks.
    • Now we plunged into a deep shade with the boughs lacing each other overhead, and crossed dainty, rustic bridges over the cold trout-streams, the boards giving back the clatter of our horses' feet:[…].1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC
    • European adventurers found themselves within a watery world, a tapestry of streams, channels, wetlands, lakes and lush riparian meadows enriched by floodwaters from the Mississippi River.2013 January, Nancy Langston, “The Fraught History of a Watery World”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 1, page 59
    Synonyms:
    beck, brook, burn
  2. (umbrella term) All moving waters.
  3. A thin connected passing of a liquid through a lighter gas (e.g. air).
    • He poured the milk in a thin stream from the jug to the glass.
  4. Current, the force of moving water.
    • to swim against the stream
  5. Any steady flow or succession of material, such as water, air, radio signal or words.
    • Her constant nagging was to him a stream of abuse.
    • With a little manœuvring they contrived to meet on the doorstep which was […] in a boiling stream of passers-by, hurrying business people speeding past in a flurry of fumes and dust in the bright haze.1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 10, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC
  6. (figuratively) A particular path, channel, division, or way of proceeding.
    • Haredi Judaism is a stream of Orthodox Judaism characterized by rejection of modern secular culture.
  7. A source or repository of data that can be read or written only sequentially.
    • In the context of computer science, lexical analysis can be defined as the conversion of a stream of characters to a stream of meaningful tokens.
  8. An instance of streaming digital data.
    • If your favorite Succession storylines involve the fictional ATN and network drama, give Apple TV’s The Morning Show a stream.2023 May 3, Courtney Young, “13 Shows to Binge When ‘Succession’ Ends”, in Cosmopolitan
  9. A live stream.
  10. (UK) A division of a school year by perceived ability.
    • All of the bright kids went into the A stream, but I was in the B stream.
  11. A train of thought or flow in a conversation or discussion.
    • Not to switch streams, but we really need to focus on talking about the economy right now...

Verb

stream (third-person singular simple present streams, present participle streaming, simple past and past participle streamed)

  1. (intransitive) To flow in a continuous or steady manner, like a liquid.
    • beneath those banks where rivers now stream1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished...
    • When I came to myself I was lying, not in the outer blackness of the Mohune vault, not on a floor of sand; but in a bed of sweet clean linen, and in a little whitewashed room, through the window of which the spring sunlight streamed.[1898], J[ohn] Meade Falkner, Moonfleet, London; Toronto, Ont.: Jonathan Cape, published 1934, →OCLC
  2. (intransitive) To extend; to stretch out with a wavy motion; to float in the wind.
    • A flag streams in the wind.
  3. (transitive) To discharge in a stream.
    • The soldier's wound was streaming blood.
  4. (Internet) To push continuous data (e.g. music) from a server to a client computer while it is being used (played) on the client.
  5. (Internet) To livestream.
    • I did factor in the whole, like, "oh, I wonder if doing streaming, and the money that's kind of attached to it, is the reason I wanted to do this?", like, is it warping my brain? I did think about that. I've streamed for years and it's been my entire life and I've made a lot of money off it, and I...2024 March 1, F1NN5TER, 1:40 from the start, in Coming Out, archived from the original on 14 May 2024

Proper noun capitalized: Stream

Stream (plural Streams)

  1. A surname.

stream meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

stream in Hindi

small river
नदी nadī, रूद rūd, धारा dhārā
any steady flow or succession of material
धारा dhārā, बहे bahe, प्रवाह pravāh

stream in Tamil

stream
தாரை tārai

stream in Marathi

computing: source or repository of data
स्ट्रीम sṭrīm

stream in Urdu

small river
نَدی nadī, رُود rūd, دھارا dhārā
any steady flow or succession of material
دھارا dhārā
More languagesFewer languages
stream in Bengali
ছড়া choṛa, স্রোত srōt
stream in Telugu
వాగు vāgu, ఉపనది upanadi, ధార dhāra
stream in Malayalam
അരുവി aruvi
stream in Kannada
ಪೊನಲ್, ಪೊನಲು, ಹೊನಲ್, ಹೊನಲು
stream in Punjabi
نیں naiṉ, ਧਾਰ dhār, ਨਾਲ਼ਾ nāḷā
stream in Gujarati
પ્રવાહ pravāh
stream in Sanskrit
प्रवाह pravāha, रेतस् retas, स्रवति sravati
stream in Sinhala
දොළ doḷa
stream in Tagalog
sapa, agos, daloy
stream in Arabic
جَدْوَل jadwal, تَيَّار tayyār, تَدَفّقَ tadaffaqa
stream in Malay
sungai kecil, strim, aliran
stream in Indonesian
anak sungai
stream in Thai
ลำธาร lam taan, กระแส grà-sɛ̌ɛ
stream in Vietnamese
suối
Dzongkha
གཙང་ཆུ gtsang chu

Examples of stream in a sentence

  • A new stream of migrants is leaving the continent.2011 December 21, Helen Pidd, “Europeans migrate south as continent drifts deeper into crisis”, in the Guardian:
  • I did factor in the whole, like, "oh, I wonder if doing streaming, and the money that's kind of attached to it, is the reason I wanted to do this?", like, is it warping my brain?2024 March 1, F1NN5TER, 1:40 from the start, in Coming Out, archived from the original on 14 May 2024:

All 40 example sentences with stream

Synonyms of stream

Forms of stream

Noun
pluralstreams
Verb
third-person singular presentstreams
present participlestreaming
past participlestreamed
paststreamed
Proper noun
pluralStreams

Past tense of stream: streamed

Plural of stream: streams

Origin of stream

From Middle English streem, strem, from Old English strēam, from Proto-West Germanic *straum, from Proto-Germanic *straumaz (“stream”), from Proto-Indo-European *srowmos (“river”), from Proto-Indo-European *srew- (“to flow”). Doublet of rheum. Cognate with Scots strem, streme, streym (“stream, river”), North Frisian Stroom, struum (“stream”), West Frisian stream (“stream”), Low German Stroom (“stream”), Dutch stroom (“current, flow, stream”), German Strom (“current, stream”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål strøm (“current, stream, flow”), Norwegian Nynorsk straum (“current, stream, flow”), Swedish ström (“current, stream, flow”), Faroese streymur (“stream”), Icelandic straumur (“current, stream, torrent, flood”), Ancient Greek ῥεῦμα (rheûma, “stream, flow”), Lithuanian srovė (“current, stream”) Polish strumień (“stream”), Welsh ffrwd (“stream, current”), Scottish Gaelic sruth (“stream”).

Words formed from stream

Phrases with stream

40 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with stream

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about stream

What does stream mean?
Stream means a small river; a large creek; a body of moving water confined by banks.
What is stream in Hindi?
Stream in Hindi is नदी (nadī), रूद (rūd), धारा (dhārā). See Stream meaning in Hindi.
How do you use stream in a sentence?
A new stream of migrants is leaving the continent.
What part of speech is stream?
Stream can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce stream?
Stream is pronounced /ˈstɹiːm/.
What is the plural of stream?
The plural of stream is streams.

Words near stream in the dictionary

  1. streakwise
  2. streaky
  3. streaky bacon
  4. streal
  5. streals
  6. stream
  7. stream bed
  8. stream beds
  9. stream cable
  10. stream cables
  11. stream cipher

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stream (page history and authors); Stream (page history and authors); தாரை (Tamil) (page history and authors); stream (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); نیں (Punjabi) (page history and authors); પ્રવાહ (Gujarati) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-stream.ogg.

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