Chrysti The Wordsmith: Watershed - 2

Greetings verb of yours last time on Kristi the wordsmith we looked at the noun watershed from two different sources. The Environmental Protection Agency defines watershed as the area of land where all of the water that is under it or drains off of it goes into the same place but the Oxford English Dictionary says a watershed is the line separating the waters flowing into different rivers or river basins. A narrow elevated tract of ground between two drainage areas. Let's follow the Oxford English dictionaries definition and history of the word. The English watershed is probably a translation of the German word vas or Sharia which means something like water split referring to the line separating two drainage areas. The English term watershed first appeared in a document dated 18 0 3. America's Continental Divide which rides the crest of the Rocky Mountains is an example of this sense of the word water coming down the west side of the Rockies flows into the Pacific Ocean while water

shutting off the east slope eventually ends up in the Gulf of Mexico. Theoretically a raindrop that falls nanometers to the west of the continental divide has an entirely different destiny than a drop that falls nanometers to the opposite side. This notion inspired the figurative use of watershed as a crucial moment or place of decision where a destiny falls on one side of the line or the other. I'm Christie the wordsmith Christie the wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry sued web dot com.