Meanings
- not comparableStreaming, flowing (of a liquid, object blown by wind, light, sound).
The biker sped by, hair astream from under her helmet.
4 more examples
Glorious the northern lights astream;
1763, Christopher Smart, A Song to David, London: Elkin Mathews, published 1901, page 34[…] as a finger of smoke / Astream over woodland
1892, George Meredith, “The Empty Purse”, in Poems, London: Macmillan, page 91968, Donald G. Payne (as Donald Gordon), The Golden Oyster, New York: William Morrow, 1968, Prologue, p. 14, […] oil astream from his engine, he came on till a burst of incendiaries hit him flush in the fuel tank.
The charioteer […] / His left hand lopped […] / Bronze reins astream in his right,
2010, Seamus Heaney, “Chanson d’aventure”, in Human Chain, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 14 - not comparableHaving something flowing from, down or along it; covered (with something flowing).
Past the finish line, she doubled over panting, her hair astream with sweat.
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There the swishing tailed cows stand with mouths all astream,
1887, Miller Hageman, “The Chippie at the Spring”, in Bird-Songs Translated into Words, Brooklyn, NY, page 721958, Samuel Beckett (translator), “Morning” by José Manuel Martínez Navarrete, in Octavio Paz (ed.), An Anthology of Mexican Poetry, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, p. 92, In an instant / the world entire is astream with joy.
[…] he twisted his head sharply and stared at the dark windows astream with rain,
1967, John Farris, King Windom, New York: Trident Press, Part 1, Chapter 30, p. 372the causeways to Miami Beach all astream with traffic
1984, Jan Morris, “What They Had to Offer”, in Journeys, Oxford University Press, page 101
- not comparableIn, into, on, onto or along a stream (or other watercourse).
I prefer to clean the fish I catch right away, while I’m astream.
4 more examples
And pushed the laden raft astream
1883, Edmund Clarence Stedman, “The Hand of Lincoln”, in Poems Now First Collected, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, published 1897, page 5[…] always he appeared at right or left, sometimes even on a log astream,
1908, Stewart Edward White, chapter 24, in The Riverman, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, page 209There are many books written about shrimp cookery, for anyone who wants to go further afield or astream,
1969, M. F. K. Fisher, chapter 4, in With Bold Knife and Fork,, New York: Putnam, published 1979, page 661990, Thomas McGuane, “Fishing the Big Hole” in An Outside Chance, Boston: Houghton Mifflin / Seymour Lawrence, p. 249, […] the kind of sleepy, merry conversation I associate with the beginning of a day astream.
- not comparablenauticalIn line with the stream.
1896, Claud Worth diary entry dated 24 September, 1896, in Yacht Cruising, J.D. Potter, 1910, cited in J.O. Coote (ed.), The Norton Book of the Sea, New York: Norton, 1989, p. 138, After she was once fairly astream of her drogue she shipped no more heavy water.
2 more examples
1892, E. F. Qualtrough, The Sailor’s Handy Book, New York: Scribner, Section 3, p. 145, Icebergs should always be passed to one side to avoid the detached fragments, lying low in the water, which are often found astream of the berg in masses sufficiently great to stave in the bows of the strongest ship.
The ship was pitching with an unsteadiness which meant they were now well astream; their charges could not get away.
1945, Thomas B. Costain, The Black Rose, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, Book 2, Chapter 11, p. 286
Origin
Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with astream
Anagrams
Cite this entry
astream. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/astream
“astream.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/astream. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “astream,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/astream.
Source: astream on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.