Hard to believe it’s been over 20 years

For my 25th birthday, our good friend Mike took Electra and me for hill-climbing to the McDonalds stronghold outside of Edinburgh. On our way there, we passed two streams, which Mike identified as Glen Doom and Glen Sorrow.

Their charming names notwithstanding, I wondered what the difference between a glen and a stream is. Some 20 years later, I finally have my answer, courtesy of Meg Neal of Atlas Obscura. who has compiled 58 different ways of describing bodies of water,

Size Matters: Starting Small

As Meg explains, the distinction between the various terms is usually defined by size. As the old adage goes:

you can step over a brook, jump over a creek, wade across a stream and swim across a river.

To describe a small stream, you might use any of the following:

• A stream (#1) tends…