A large and often winding stream which drains a land mass, carrying water down from higher areas to a lower point, oftentimes ending in another body of water, such as an ocean or in an inland sea.
(typography) A visually undesirable effect of white space running down a page, caused by spaces between words on consecutive lines happening to coincide.
Usage notes
As with the names of lakes and mountains, the names of rivers are typically formed by adding the word before or after the unique term: the River Thames or the Yangtze River. Generally speaking, names formed using adjectives or attributives see river added to the end, as with the Yellow River. It is less common to add river before names than it is with lakes, but many of the rivers of Britain are written that way, as with the River Severn; indeed, British English tends to use "River X" in such cases while American, South African, Australian and New Zealand English use "X River". The former derives from the earlier but now uncommon form river of ~: the 19th century River of Jordan is now usually simply the River Jordan.
It is common to preface the proper names of rivers with the article the.