lavant

plural lavants · alternative levant

1. UKdialectalA shallow or more or less intermittent spring, or the stream of water (bourne) which feeds and springs forth from such a spring.

   […] an intermittant stream (locally known as a "lavant," but in many parts called a "bourne") appears in the valley bottom […]

   1928, Water and Water Engineering, page 316

   4 more examples

   Lavants, are land springs, which break out much, on the downs of Sussex, Hants, and Wilts. The country people say, that when the Lavants rise, corn will be dear; meaning, that when the earth is so glutted with water as to send[…]

   1815, James Dallaway, A History of the Western Division of the County of Sussex: Including the Rapes of Chichester, Arundel, and Bramber, with the City and Diocese of Chichester, page 112

   In this part of Hampshire a bourn is called a lavant, and after long internals when a lavant rises at Hambledon, some of the springs rise from, or quite close to[,] the churchyard itself.

   1891, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, page 15

   About five miles south of Petersfield, in a valley among the chalk hills, is the village of Charlton. No permanent stream flows through this vallet, but eastward of the village a remarkable "lavant" occurs. This lavant is a flow of water from springs in the chalk of an uncertain and intermittent nature, which occur in the winter or early spring, depending on the time and degree of the winter rainfall and the consequent saturation of the chalk. The lavant springs occur at varying elevations, depending on the nature of the seasons; the higher the lavant, the greater is the flow of water, […]

   1894, Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society, Proceedings, page 54

   The cold wet weather continued unabated during February and the underground springs ('lavants') began to break out of the chalk hills ominously early.

   2007, Richard Mabey, Gilbert White: A Biography of the Author of The Natural History of Selborne, University of Virginia Press, →ISBN, page 147

2. UKdialectalA violent flow or rush of water.

   How it did rain! It ran down the street in a lavant.

1. A civil parish in Chichester district, West Sussex, England (OS grid ref SU8508).
2. A minor river in West Sussex.
3. A community in Lanark Highlands township, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada.

1. A municipality in East Tyrol, Austria.