the.com/oxbow
a river that wandered too far, got cut off, and became a lonely curved lake
means A U-shaped bend in a river — or, once the river straightens its course and abandons that loop, the curved standalone lake left behind.
from From the literal ox-bow: the U-shaped wooden collar that loops under an ox's neck to hold the yoke in place. "Ox" plus "bow" (in its old sense of something bent or curved, related to the verb "to bow"). The river feature is named for its shape — that fat, rounded U is exactly the curve of the harness, so people simply borrowed the farmyard word for the landscape.
- slow suicide
- forms when a river severs its own meander loop
- shape source
- named for the U-shaped collar on an ox yoke
- death timeline
- slowly fills with sediment, becoming swamp then meadow
- science word
- called a billabong in Australia
- satellite scar
- visible from space as river ghost-trails
for instance
cuckmere river oxbow — serpentine meander in east sussex, england, visible from clifftop as a perfect hairpin curve