Word.ws English Dictionary

valley

Syllables: val·ley/ˈvæli/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/ˈvalɪj/

valley noun: an elongated depression cast between hills or mountains, often with a river flowing through it.

valley: an elongated depression cast between hills or mountains, often with a river flowing through it
Image: KennyOMG, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

valley (plural valleys or (obsolete) vallies)

  1. An elongated depression cast between hills or mountains, often with a river flowing through it.
    • The Indus River valley was the site of an ancient civilization.
    • [I]t sank down through the air and poured over the ground in a manner rather liquid than gaseous, abandoning the hills, and streaming into the valleys and ditches and water-courses even as I have heard the carbonic acid gas that pours from volcanic clefts is wont to do.1898, H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, page 144
    Synonyms:
    dale, vale
  2. An area which drains itself into a river.
  3. Any structure resembling one, e.g. the interior angle formed by the intersection of two sloping roof planes.

Verb

valley (third-person singular simple present valleys, present participle valleying, simple past and past participle valleyed)

  1. (intransitive, poetic, rare) To form the shape of a valley.
    • These hues of red rose and green and pale green, ruffled and pouted in the billowy white of the dress ballooning and valleying softly, like a yacht before the sail bends low; […]1879, George Meredith, chapter XVIII, in The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative. […], volume I, London: C[harles] Kegan Paul & Co., […], →OCLC, page 323
    • Over Govino Bay, looking up from the water’s edge, the landscape resembles nothing so much as the hills above Genova, valleying into the sea, […]1970, Charles Wright, The Grave of the Right Hand, Middletown, C.T.: Wesleyan University Press, →ISBN, page 25

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Valley

Valley (countable and uncountable, plural Valleys)

  1. (countable) A surname from landforms.
    Synonyms:
    Vallee
  2. A community in Colchester, Nova Scotia, Canada.
  3. A city in Chambers County, Alabama, United States, on the Georgia state line.
  4. A city in Nebraska, United States.
  5. A number of townships in the United States, listed under Valley Township.
  6. A village and community in Anglesey, Wales (OS grid ref SH2979).

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Valley

the Valley

  1. (abbreviation, ellipsis) Ellipsis of the San Fernando Valley: a valley of southern California, United States.
    • The Valley is getting downright cosmopolitan, but it’s unlikely the region will ever completely morph into a hip haven.2006 July 16, Marc Weingarten, “The San Fernando Valley? Hip? Like, Totally!”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
    • She's in school paying for tuition / Doing porn in the Valley2011, “Novacane”, in nostalgia,ULTRA, performed by Frank Ocean
  2. (abbreviation, ellipsis) Ellipsis of Silicon Valley.
    • The sunshine, the abundance of U.S. government research grants, the willingness of Stanford University to let its professors walk out the door with their inventions and start companies, the presence of a counterculture intent on arming the masses with new technology—all made the Valley the place to...1999, Michael Lewis, “The Accelerated Grimace”, in The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story, W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN, page 38
    • Since the late 1950s, when perhaps six unions were active in the Valley, the trade associations and individual firms have made it one of their primary missions to destroy all vestiges of worker autonomy, the most visible manifestation of which is the union.2002, David Naguib Pellow, Lisa Sun-Hee Park, “Toward Environmental and Social Justice in Silicon Valley, USA, and Beyond”, in The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant...

valley meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

valley in Hindi

elongated depression between hills or mountains
घाटी ghāṭī, वादी vādī

valley in Tamil

elongated depression between hills or mountains
பள்ளம் paḷḷam, பள்ளத்தாக்கு paḷḷattākku

valley in Marathi

elongated depression between hills or mountains
दरी darī

valley in Urdu

elongated depression between hills or mountains
وادی vādī
More languagesFewer languages
valley in Bengali
উপত্যকা upottoka
valley in Telugu
లోయ lōya, లొంక loṅka, కోన kōna
valley in Malayalam
താഴ്വര tāḻvara
valley in Kannada
ಕಣಿವೆ kaṇive
valley in Punjabi
ਘਾਟੀ ghāṭī
valley in Gujarati
ખીણ khīṇ
valley in Odia
ଉପତ୍ୟକା upatyakā
valley in Sanskrit
उपत्यका upatyakā
valley in Assamese
ভৈয়াম bhoiam, উপত্যকা upoittoka
valley in Nepali
उपत्यका upatyakā
valley in Pashto
دره dara, وادي wādi, دورينه durina
valley in Tagalog
lambak
valley in Arabic
وَادٍ wādin, الْوَادِي al-wādī
valley in Malay
lembah, bukau, wadi, lebak
valley in Indonesian
lembah
valley in Thai
หุบ hùp, หุบเขา hùp-kǎo, หุบเหว hùp-hěeo
valley in Vietnamese
thung lũng
valley in Myanmar
တောင်ကြား taungkra:

Examples of valley in a sentence

  • The El Dorado-Searchlight area is geologically a north-south trending orogenous zone, paralleled on the east by the valley of the Colorado, and by an alluvial valley on the west.1968, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, volumes 11-14, page vi:
  • Now the two great Asian powers, India and China, are rushing to harness them as they cut through some of the world's deepest valleys.2013 August 16, John Vidal, “Dams endanger ecology of Himalayas”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 10, page 8:

All 40 example sentences with valley

Synonyms of valley

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of valley

Forms of valley

Noun
pluralvalleys
plural (obsolete)vallies
Verb
third-person singular presentvalleys
present participlevalleying
past participlevalleyed
pastvalleyed
Proper noun
pluralValleys

Plural of valley: valleys

Origin of valley

From Middle English valeye, valey, from Anglo-Norman valey, Old French valee (compare French vallée), from Latin vallēs/vallis. Doublet of vlei and vly. Displaced native dene, from dene and partially displaced native dale, from dæl.

Words formed from valley

Phrases with valley

161 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with valley

13 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about valley

What does valley mean?
Valley means an elongated depression cast between hills or mountains, often with a river flowing through it.
What is valley in Hindi?
Valley in Hindi is घाटी (ghāṭī), वादी (vādī). See Valley meaning in Hindi.
How do you use valley in a sentence?
The El Dorado-Searchlight area is geologically a north-south trending orogenous zone, paralleled on the east by the valley of the Colorado, and by an alluvial valley on the west.
What part of speech is valley?
Valley can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce valley?
Valley is pronounced /ˈvæli/ (UK).
What is the plural of valley?
The plural of valley is valleys.

Words near valley in the dictionary

  1. Vallesian
  2. Valletta
  3. Vallettan
  4. Vallettans
  5. vallevarite
  6. valley
  7. Valley Acres
  8. valley board
  9. valley boards
  10. valley boy
  11. valley boys

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: valley (page history and authors); Valley (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-valley.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Back ache-Valley.wav.

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