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watershed event?
3

watershed event?

watershed event?

(OP)
I know what it means (dramatic turning point), but what's a watershed and why is it dramatic?

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RE: watershed event?

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-wat1.htm

In English, the noun shed is the English equivalent of the German scheide, both of which have come down to us from the same Old German root. The English noun derives from the verb to shed. It’s an old word for a division, split or separation—a shed could be a hair parting, for example, and could also be used for a ridge of land separating two areas of lower country, a divide. ...

In North America, the word watershed often means not the dividing line, but the river catchment areas on either side of the ridge, the whole land area that drains into a particular river. How the sense shifted isn’t clear. It came into use only around the 1870s, and may have been a misunderstanding.

The difference in sense explains why Americans don’t use the figurative sense of the word as much as the rest of us do. That refers to an important point of division or transition, as in this sentence from the Daily Telegraph in June 1999: “The Balkans conflict is at a watershed between a diplomatic settlement and the prospect of a ground war”. This figurative usage only makes sense if you use watershed in its original meaning of a dividing line.

RE: watershed event?

Watershed:

1. A ridge of high land dividing two areas that are drained by different river systems. Also called water parting.

So a watershed event is the analogous turning point feature of the historic landscape.

RE: watershed event?

(OP)
To me a shed is a small structure so watershed might be something like a water closet... that didn't make much sense!   

Your definitions of watershed make good sense. Thx.

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RE: watershed event?


Interesting. Since a "turning point" implies a crisis, a decisive moment, a critical period, a significant and crucial change, it isn't strange that it may be dramatic.

According to the Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, dramatic applies to situations in life and literature that stir the imagination and emotions deeply.


RE: watershed event?

But if you walk across a watershed, in reality, it is a mere ridge. A slight change in gradient from positive to negative. The effort taken to cross a watershed is slight, and which side you are of it is pretty random.

Cheers

Greg Locock

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RE: watershed event?

GregLocock's comment reminded me of the scene in Jurassic Park where Jeff Goldblum (portraying the chaos theory genius) explains random events to Laura Dern.  He shows that placing the drop of water on her hand is a deliberate choice, but once the water has randomly chosen a path due to gravity and resistance, the option to choose other paths has been lost without the intervention of some outside agent, and that because of randomness it cannot be repeated exactly.

With that in mind, allow me to build on GregLocock's point.  He is absolutely correct that very often the ridge (or crisis point, or perhaps the resistance that forces choosing a path) is often a very subtle change.  But the way I think of the term watershed is that once the rain falling on that ridge has begun to move down one side of the ridge or the other, the side of the ridge on which the water must travel is now fixed and irreversible without some intervention by an outside agent.  Hence, any given raindrop experiences a "watershed event".

So on a macro scale, once a civilization or nation or community chooses a specific path, all other paths that could have been chosen at that moment in time are now no longer available, without the intervention of some outside agent.

As an example of the defining nature of a watershed event, it is now impossible for a person to be born into a world that has never had an atomic bomb exploded in anger.  A person may be born today and perhaps never hear of the atomic bomb, but it is impossible for any person to be born into a world where it has not been used for war.  Therefore the dropping of an atomic bomb in an act of war (I am not discussing the legitimacy, only the event itself) was a watershed event for humanity, by my definition.

For better or worse as far as definitions go, that is how I view a watershed event for any given set or subset of humanity.

(With thanks to GregLocock for the stimulation of my thought process)

debodine

RE: watershed event?

(OP)
The part about a drop of rain taking one of two radically different courses depending on what happenned at the top makes sense.

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RE: watershed event?

from the same site I linked earlier:

In English, the noun shed is the English equivalent of the German scheide, both of which have come down to us from the same Old German root. The English noun derives from the verb to shed. It’s an old word for a division, split or separation—a shed could be a hair parting, for example, and could also be used for a ridge of land separating two areas of lower country, a divide. (These days a shed is usually a simple building for shelter or storage; this is an altered form of shade, and so has no link to this other sense of the word.)


RE: watershed event?

I thought a watershed event was like the Pensylvania flood in the 1870/80's or so.  I always took a watershed event as any "big happening".  A definition that favours a pumphouse does seem more logical.

         Going the Big Inch!
http://virtualpipeline.spaces.msn.com

RE: watershed event?

Watershed-It's the area of land that catches rain and snow and drains or seeps into a marsh, stream, river, lake or groundwater. Homes, farms, ranches, forests, small towns, big cities and more can make up watersheds. Some cross-county, state, and even international borders. Watersheds come in all shapes and sizes. Some are millions of square miles; others are just a few acres. Just as creeks drain into rivers, watersheds are nearly always part of a larger watershed.

Thomas Henry Huxley, in 1877 remark the following:
"To avoid all ambiguity it is perhaps best to set aside the original meaning of ‘watershed’, and employ the term to denote the slope along which the water flows, while the expression ‘water-parting’ is employed for the summit of this slope".

John Wesley Powell, scientist geographer, put it best when he said that a watershed is:
"That area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community."
Watersheds come in all shapes and sizes. They cross-county, state, and national boundaries. No matter where you are, you're in a watershed!

Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans is the example of a watershed over flooding caused by the last big hurricane storm.

When designing a city or urban constructions one has to take into account the watershed effect in the case of a big over flooding.


Luis

RE: watershed event?

ivymike (Mechanical)
I think the more modern use of the word "shed" in English is to define separation as in "A dog shedding it's coat".
more so than a division or split.
B.E.

RE: watershed event?

Would this be analogous to a paradigm shift?

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."
Steven K. Roberts, Technomad
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RE: watershed event?

In the figurative sense, watershed could be the opposite of watershed, with all its irreversible consequences.

RE: watershed event?

I think the even more modern version is "Shedd," as in margarine.

RE: watershed event?

margarine?

RE: watershed event?

ivymike (Mechanical)
Ok, how can you Shedd it, if you are spreading it?

RE: watershed event?

Watershed is a kind of water cycle if you put margarine on that you are contributing to a over flooding!

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