A river may have several “forks”. Say 3 rivers which all flow into one river…
There will be the “north fork”, “middle fork”, and “south fork” of said river.
Shouldn’t it be the “north tine”, “middle tine” and “south tine”?
I haven’t looked up the complete etymology of the various definitions, but “fork” is a very old word (Fork Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster), and I would almost be willing to bet that the definition pertaining to “to divide (into two parts)” is the older usage (ie, going back to Latin furca as in bifurcate, etc.).
To call such splits in a river “tines” would imply that the use of the word “fork” to describe such a split is because the river looks like the tool called a fork. But that’s probably not at all the case.
This is better suited to IMHO than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
From Etymonline.com
Even if tine had come first, it’s wouldn’t necessarily had led to tine being applied to river branches. Language and logic are separate creatures.
Note also: “fork” as applied to rivers seems to mean, usually, that several separate streams join into one larger stream. This is counter-intuitive to my notion of what “fork” should mean.
If one larger stream were to somehow divide into two or more smaller streams (which I think must be a rather uncommon thing), it would make more sense to me to use the word “fork” in that case.
If the people that named it lived upstream, yes, but if you discovered the geography by starting at the large stream and working your way upward, you’d find the stream would indeed fork.
My guess would be that ‘fork’ names are from people heading upstream: I’m following the Fred river, and find a place where two approximately equal rivers join. Which one do I call the Fred river, and what to name the other one (Barney)?
Easier to have the North and South forks of Fred.
I need to type faster . . .
It’s not just rivers. I grew up on the North Fork of Long Island. It’s all land. (The South Fork is where the rich people live).
We’re also one of the few places in the US where “creek” means its original definition (a saltwater estuary).
Large rivers often split into branches when approaching their outflow. These branches are called distributaries. An example is the Atchafalaya River in Louisiana, which is a distributary of the Mississippi. Another well known example: the Nile’s delta is formed by distributaries.
They have branches, like the forks in trees. Lacking any ther knowledge of the etylmology of ‘fork’ I would assume the term fork was applied to trees before it was used for utensils
I have a couple of saucer-sized stones that I took from a West Virginia river some years ago: the North Fork of the South Branch of the Potomac River, near Seneca Rocks. Pat Paulsen used to have a commercial where he called it the POT-uh-mack.
If I had a nickel for every tine this forking question has been asked, I’d have a nickel.
Then it would have threeks.
So two branchs are tweerks?
Iggorance fought here! I never encountered the word distributary before (and neither has this browser’s built-in spell-checker either). And furthermore, I had never noticed the connection between the words “tribute” and “distribute” either.
So would this logic suggest that a river which flows into another larger river should be known as “contributary” rather than a “tributary”. 