combe
nounUK /kuːm/
Etymology From Middle English coumbe, cumbe, from Old English cumb, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *kumbaz; compare Dutch kom (“bowl, basin”), German Kump (“vessel”). Related to Welsh cwm (“a hollow valley”), Ancient Greek κύμβη (kúmbē, “hollow”), Sanskrit कुम्भ (kumbha, “a pot, jug”), etc. through Proto-Indo-European *ḱumbʰ-.
1
A valley, often wooded and often with no river
- its long, latticed window [...] looked out on a wild spreading view of hill and heather and wooded combe.1914, Saki, ‘The Cobweb’, Beasts and Superbeasts:
- gradual rise the shelving combe displayed.1805, Robert Southey, “(please specify the page)”, in Madoc, London: […] [F]or Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and A[rchibald] Constable and Co, […], by James Ballantyne, […], →OCLC:
1 more example
- You wake up next morning on what looks like Salisbury Plain, only here you climb up the side of every combe, round the end and out the other side.1950 April, Timothy H. Cobb, “The Kenya-Uganda Railway”, in Railway Magazine, pages 264-265:
2
A cirque.
- Derived terms
- Comberow, Comstock