Rindle, Rivulet, Run, Rundle, Runnel, Runoff: Origins, Forms, Histories of Words Meaning River, Lake

The natural features of a region are its topography (Greek topos, "place"). Rivers, lakes, and related bodies of freshwater are important types of topographic features.

Freshwater natural entities have accumulated a wide range of colorful names. Often many different terms refer to exactly the same feature (see, for example, rindle, rundle, and runnel below).

In the current alphabetic series of words that name such freshwater features, here are the origins, forms, and histories of rindle, rivulet, run, rundle, runnel, and runoff. The dates of forms and meanings come from the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

Rindle, Rundle, Runnel
Rindle, rundle, and runnel all have the same meaning: a small stream or rivulet.

They all have the same origin as well: Old English rynel (before 12th century), akin to Old English rinnan ("to run"). Old English rynel became Middle English rinel (15th century).

Middle English rinel yielded the Modern English altered forms rindle (16th century) and runnel (16th century), the latter influenced by the verb run. Runnel, in turn, spun off another variant spelling, rundle (16th century).

Today runnel is the standard form, while rindle and rundle are dialectal words, used mainly in England.

Rivulet
Rivulet entered English in the 16th century from Italian rivoletto, a diminutive of rivolo, from Latin rivulus, itself a diminutive of rivus ("stream").

A small stream or river is a rivulet (1587).

Run
The Modern English noun run (16th century) comes from Middle English rune (14th century). The noun comes from the verb run, which goes back to Old English rinnan (before 12th century).

The original meaning of the noun run is an act of running (14th century).

In the Midland dialect of the United States and in some dialects of northern England, a small natural stream of water, such as a brook or a rivulet, is known as a run (1581).

Any noticeable flow or current of water, such as a strong rush of the tide, is also a run (1814).

Runoff
Runoff is the portion of precipitation on land that eventually reaches streams, especially the water from rain or melted snow that flows over the surface and picks up dissolved or suspended material (1873).
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Encyclopaedia Britannica Ready Reference 2004. CD-ROM. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2004.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2006.

Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary. 3rd ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2007.

The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1989.