A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1467 entries
artesian
Adjective, referring to a water supply that rises to the surface under its hydrostatic pressure. An artesian aquifer is a water-bearing layer sealed impermeable rock and recharged somewhere higher than where you drill, so puncturing the seal sends the water up on its own.
Etymology
From Artois, the old province of northern France — Latin Artesium, itself from the Atrebates, the Belgic tribe the Romans found living there. Carthusian monks bored a well inside their house at Lillers in 1126, pounding a narrow hole down through the strata, and it flowed without a pump. The technique was not new anywhere else (China, Egypt, and Persia had been doing it for a long time), but Europe learned it from Artois.
Notes
The Great Artesian Basin under eastern Australia is one of the largest aquifers in the world, and some of its water has been underground for more than a million years.