How to Use tributary in a Sentence

tributary

1 of 2 noun
  • This stream is a tributary of the Ohio River.
  • Boats are still the only way to access remote parts of the river and its tributaries.
    — Debra Utacia Krol, USA Today, 2 Sep. 2025
  • All of the northern tributaries are all closed (or restricted).
    — Chris Bieri, Anchorage Daily News, 8 June 2023
  • Instead, year-round rain and snow feed the Salt River and its tributaries.
    — Shi En Kim, AZCentral.com, 31 Mar. 2026
  • Dominguez’s ancestors lived along the river and its tributaries.
    — Ian James, Los Angeles Times, 1 Nov. 2023
  • The small lot was roughly 30 feet away from a fen that, via an unnamed tributary, fed into the lake.
    — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 25 May 2023
  • Explore the Paraná’s tributaries in the hotel’s launch.
    — Condé Nast, Condé Nast Traveler, 29 Apr. 2026
  • Following two decades of ice retreat, two tributaries to the north and south of the Alsek stopped feeding ice to the glacier.
    — Soo Kim, MSNBC Newsweek, 8 Sep. 2025
  • For starters, Roger Hurlbut said, the tributary is a shallow ditch for stormwater runoff.
    — Matthew Adams, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 12 Mar. 2026
  • All of western Colorado relies on water from the river and its tributaries.
    — Elise Schmelzer, Denver Post, 9 Mar. 2026
  • The Guadalupe’s tributaries tell further stories.
    — Literary Hub, 21 Nov. 2025
  • Sewage treatment plants on the Seine and its tributary, the Marne, are also being improved.
    — John Leicester, Chicago Tribune, 11 Apr. 2023
  • The river flows from tributaries in the Greensboro area to the Atlantic Ocean.
    — Rebecca Noel, Charlotte Observer, 23 Apr. 2026
  • The water would be dumped into the Niespodziany Ditch, a tributary of the Kankakee.
    — Doug Ross, Chicago Tribune, 14 Mar. 2026
  • The tributaries from Iran are the only source of water in the province, other than the dwindling rainfall.
    — Alissa J. Rubin, BostonGlobe.com, 30 July 2023
  • Of all the rivers in the Colorado River tributary, the Yampa is the last without any dams.
    — Rachel Walker, Washington Post, 4 Aug. 2022
  • The old slide said the agency would remove all of the slough plugs between the Black River and tributary channels and sloughs.
    — Bryan Hendricks, arkansasonline.com, 10 Dec. 2023
  • Besides the main river itself, there are a bunch of tributaries that drop in from the east and west that can also offer excellent hunting.
    — Alex Robinson, Outdoor Life, 6 Aug. 2025
  • Should the levee fail, Lower Lake Mary will empty out into a side tributary.
    — Ellie Willard, The Arizona Republic, 10 Apr. 2023
  • Wilde’s ranch is located along Birch Creek, which is a tributary of the Bear River.
    — Jordan Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune, 4 Nov. 2022
  • And there’s no ice now in Tarryall, a tributary of the South Platte River.
    — Judith Kohler, Denver Post, 17 Apr. 2026
  • Suicide Glacier was once a much larger frozen tributary, which flowed into and merged with the Mendenhall Glacier.
    — Julia Jacobo, ABC News, 15 Aug. 2023
  • The tributary that feeds into the Pasig River serves as an extreme example of how much of our trash makes it into the ocean.
    — National Geographic, 12 Jan. 2023
  • His family has farmed for generations near its shores and that of its largest tributary, the Bear River.
    — Leia Larsen, The Salt Lake Tribune, 14 Oct. 2022
  • Of the more than five thousand tributaries that empty into the Great Lakes, about one in ten is infested with lampreys.
    — Katie Thornton, New Yorker, 24 Oct. 2025
  • One source of water are the tributaries of the West Branch of the Patapsco River.
    — Kevin Dayhoff, Baltimore Sun, 9 Sep. 2023
  • The dirt-only diamond was loamy and soft and home plate was totally submerged in a muddy puddle, a tributary of which also snaked down the third-base line.
    — Chang-Rae Lee, New Yorker, 3 May 2026
  • Triple Creek Ranch gets its name from the three tributary creeks that meet within the property to form the head of Rock Creek.
    — Jessica Alvarado Gamez, Denver Post, 27 May 2026
  • Today the Snail Darter can be found along 400 miles of the river's main stem and multiple tributaries.
    — Robert Kunzig, Scientific American, 17 Oct. 2023
  • Vast stretches of suburban concrete block its natural drainage, and thousands of homes have been built along its winding, sluggish tributaries.
    — Dominic Boyer, The Conversation, 14 Apr. 2026

tributary

2 of 2 adjective
  • All of that is good news for tributary anglers such as Kiehm.
    — Paul A. Smith, Journal Sentinel, 2023-01-02
  • Testing of the tributary waters that feed the lake has been scaled back
    — Keith Matheny, Detroit Free Press, 2017-09-29
  • On Friday night, a falling branch took the tributary line with it.
    — oregonlive, 2021-02-19
  • Each tributary canyon is unique, with dramatic shapes, and vivid colors.
    — Jill K. Robinson, San Francisco Chronicle, 2018-05-09
  • Look for breaking fish around the areas where the tributary rivers meet the main lake as well as around long points and offshore humps.
    — Frank Sargeant, al, 2021-09-03
  • And all the Great Salt Lake’s tributary watersheds are off to a good start so far.
    — Leia Larsen, The Salt Lake Tribune, 2022-12-21
  • Much of it reaches the river through municipal storm drains and tributary streams.
    — John Flesher, chicagotribune.com, 2021-03-04
  • Here’s the poignant meaning behind Her Majesty’s tributary botanics.
    — Rachel Silva, ELLE Decor, 2022-09-13
  • By Valentine’s Day, dry weather had plunged snowpack above most tributary streams back below normal.
    — AZCentral.com, 2022-03-01
  • Baldwin Creek and two headwater tributary streams run through the preserve, and the area is a habitat for many plant and animal species.
    — Rich Heileman, cleveland, 2020-11-13
  • The largest tributary merging with Bayou des Cannes drained most of today’s Uptown.
    — Richard Campanella, NOLA.com, 2020-10-30
  • Target transition areas—where a tributary flows into the main lake, for example, or a side channel rises onto shallow flats.
    — Keith Sutton, Outdoor Life, 2020-11-24
  • After knocking his tee shot into the tributary Sunday that feeds into Rae’s Creek, Horschel tried to hit it out.
    — Tim Reynolds, ajc, 2021-04-11
  • After knocking his tee shot into the tributary Sunday that feeds into Rae's Creek, Horschel tried to hit it out.
    — Tim Reynolds, Star Tribune, 2021-04-11
  • Coastal fall tributary seasons: Will be announced later this spring; however, there will be no wild coho fishing in north coast tributaries this year.
    — Bill Monroe, OregonLive.com, 2018-04-13
  • Most important to Beijing, the pattern could over the long run turn Russia into a kind of tributary state to Beijing.
    — Milton Ezrati, Forbes, 2022-04-18
  • River flows, tributary flows, and reservoir releases are all increasing daily as snow melt really gets rolling, and the river has finally begun to dirty up.
    — Colorado Parks & Wildlife, The Denver Post, 2017-06-11
  • Visitors are laden with so many tributary gifts that cemetery guards have developed a side business: using luggage carts commandeered from the airport to shuttle offerings from vans to the grave for a small fee.
    — Tom Downey, WSJ, 2017-07-30
  • As a bonus, both fish ladders and trap and haul can make life unpleasant for communities of fish that are further downstream, or in tributary environments where there’s one main transport system along the main river.
    — Aja Romano, Vox, 2019-08-11
  • The crater is officially known as the Batagaika crater, named after the near-flowing Batagayka, a tributary river of the Yana river.
    — Joshua Hawkins, BGR, 2022-05-25
  • Under the new plan, developers would construct the dams, now numbering four, in a side tributary canyon called Big Canyon, about 23 miles west of Tuba City.
    — Debra Utacia Krol, The Arizona Republic, 2020-08-02
  • The suspicious Ming were constricting foreign trade; Portugal was not a formal tributary state, and therefore was not recognized by the dynasty’s officials as having the right to trade.
    — Michael Schuman, The Atlantic, 2020-06-06
  • At Lewis Smith, best bet is to look for striped bass making spawning runs up the tributary rivers--the fish migrate from early March to early April before returning to the depths of the lake for the rest of the year.
    — Frank Sargeant, AL.com, 2018-03-15
  • The aversion appears to be mutual, with Kim sharing his grandfather’s suspicion of the giant neighbor that long relegated Korea to tributary-state status.
    — Hannah Beech, The New Yorker, 2017-02-23
  • The mixed hardwood forest and small tributary stream provides habitat for local wildlife, absorbs excess nutrients from stormwater runoff, and sequesters tons of carbon annually, according to the Land Trust.
    — S. Wayne Carter Jr., baltimoresun.com, 2021-08-06
  • Rather than a balance of powers, China has traditionally had tributary or hegemonic relationships with nearby states such as Vietnam, Korea, and Japan.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 2012-05-19
  • But in China’s case, that pushback comes not just from the West but also from neighbors who remember the tributary system of its imperial past — or are wary of its Communist political system despite its embrace of capitalism decades ago.
    — Jane Perlez, New York Times, 2017-10-22
  • In addition, Border Patrol agents on the ground said increasingly urbanized canyons and tributary areas in Tijuana — located west of the river along the international border — have become a major source of sewage and contaminated runoff.
    — Joshua Emerson Smith, sandiegouniontribune.com, 2017-05-26

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tributary.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: