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?
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?
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?
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?
Cheers
Greg Locock
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RE: watershed event?
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?
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RE: watershed event?
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?
Going the Big Inch!
http://virtualpipeline.spaces.msn.com
RE: watershed event?
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?
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?
"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."
Steven K. Roberts, Technomad
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http://www.countrycrock.com/products.asp
RE: watershed event?
Ok, how can you Shedd it, if you are spreading it?
RE: watershed event?