A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1467 entries
fluting
Fluting is the grooving of a surface into parallel channels. In glacial country, it names the long low ridges that run in the direction the ice moved, formed as soft material was squeezed into the cavity behind an obstacle in the bed, and a flute field can hold hundreds of them running dead straight for miles. On rock and on snow faces, the same word names vertical parallel grooves cut by running water, wind, or repeated avalanche.
Etymology
The word comes from architecture, where a fluted column is one carved with vertical channels, and behind that is the musical instrument, from the French. The vocabulary of landscape is full of borrowings from building, including buttress, arch, column, terrace, pavement, and amphitheater.
Notes
Glacial flutings are among the clearest directional evidence in a landscape, since they record which way the ice was flowing across ground that may now be farmland.