TOEFL® Vocabulary ebook

Definition: Relating to high mountains

Example sentences:

• The hikers start in tropical rainforest territory and travel through moorlands, alpine meadows and glaciers on the summit

Definition: A mass of snow, ice, and rocks falling rapidly down a mountainside

Example senences:

• Only on a mountain can you experience avalanches of snow or rock.

Definition: A deep gorge, typically one with a river flowing through it.

Example senences:

• The most familiar type of canyon is probably the river canyon. The water pressure of a river can cut deep into a river bed.

Definition: Coming closer together; converging

Example senences:

• The volcanically active trail-ends are preferentially located near divergent plate boundaries and are rare near convergent boundaries.

Definition: A narrow opening or fissure, especially in a rock or wall

Example sentences:

• Many creatures hide in crevices in the rock.

Definition: Adjective (crust)

Example sentences:

• Throughout the world, most of the earthquake activities are confined to plate margin associated with crustal deformation.
• Glaciation and crustal activity have given the island its unique shape.
• At the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is a daisy chain of volcanoes, faults and crustal fractures.

Definition: The action of depositing something

Example senences:

• These chemicals prevented normal calcium deposition during eggshell formation, and caused females to lay thin-shelled eggs that often broke before hatching. Pebbles formed by the deposition of calcium in solution.

Definition: Tending to be different or develop in different directions

Example senences:

• The virtues sought in a deputy are sometimes quite divergent from those sought in a leader.

Definition: Force or throw (something) out in a violent or sudden way

Example sentences:

• Lumps of viscous lava were ejected from the volcano

Erosion is the process or the act of eroding. 

Let's learn the verb "erode" first.

If rock or soil erodes or we can say rock or soil is eroded by the weather, sea, or wind, the rock or soil cracks and breaks so that it is gradually destroyed. Here are example sentences:

• As rain falls through the atmosphere, it picks up CO2 which make rainwater become acidic. As it drains into fractures in the rock, the water begins to erode the rock creating a network of passages
• Once exposed, soil is quickly eroded by wind and rain.
• The shoreline has eroded badly.
• The shoreline was badly eroded by last winter's storms.

Okay! Now let's look at example sentences using the noun "erosion".

• Trees prevent soil erosion by soaking up water in areas with high rainfall
• Centuries of erosion by wind have carved grooves in the rocks.
• Weathering and erosion contribute to the formation of canyon.
• Soil erosion is partially caused by rain runoff washing away the soil.

Definition: An act or instance of erupting

Example senences:

• Most of Mars' surface was shaped later by meteorite impacts, volcanic eruptions and erosion by dust and wind. This record has been obscured on the Earth by billions of years of rain, wind, erosion, volcanic eruptions, mountain building, and plate tectonics.

Definition: An extended break in a rock formation, marked by the relative displacement and discontinuity of strata on either side of a particular plane

Example sentences:

• Iranian leaders have promised to rebuild the town, which is on a major earthquake fault line. Most transform faults are found on the ocean floor.

Definition:

Example sentences:

• The inner ear's structure and contents is thought to permit the shark to determine and distinguish sounds and the geomagnetic fields of the earth's magma.

Definition: A hot spring in which water intermittently boils, sending a tall column of water and steam into the air.

Example senences:

• A geyser of lava spouted between them and Seth attacked, charging through the lava like it was water, an unstoppable locomotive of power.

Definition: A slowly moving mass or river of ice formed by the accumulation and compaction of snow on mountains or near the poles.

Example sentences:

• A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation (melting and sublimation) over many years, often centuries. Glaciers slowly deform and flow due to stresses induced by their weight, creating crevasses, seracs, and other distinguishing features. They also abrade rock and debris from their substrate to create landforms such as cirques and moraines. Glaciers form only on land and are distinct from the much thinner sea ice and lake ice that form on the surface of bodies of water.

Definition: Landscape underlain by limestone that has been eroded by dissolution, producing ridges, towers, fissures, sinkholes, and other characteristic landforms.

Example senences:

• The underlying limestone karst topography allows water to flow in abundant underground rivers, feeding the numerous springs, which flow into the many creeks and streams.

Definition: The sliding down of a mass of earth or rock from a mountain or cliff.

Example senences:

• Flooding caused bridges to collapse and landslides are blocking roads to devastated coastal villages.

Definition: Hot fluid or semi-fluid material below or within the earth’s crust from which lava and other igneous rock is formed on cooling

Example senences:

• What they do know is that a ‘slow rise’ of magma is driving lava to the surface, which has created a new lava dome in the mountain's crater.

Definition: An area of low-lying land that is flooded in wet seasons or at high tide, and typically remains waterlogged at all times.

Example senences:

• The Romans became practised at draining marshes to rid areas of malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

Definition: (Especially of materials with a high melting point, such as metal and glass) liquefied by heat.

Example senences:

• A spectacular form of heat advection occurs when molten rock, or magma, erupts from a volcano. Solidification of the molten material into rocks happened as the Earth cooled.

Definition: An area of relatively level high ground

Example senences:

• This soil region is in the foothills of the Appalachian plateau, and topography ranges from nearly level to extremely steep.

To recede means to pull back, retreat, or become faint or distant. Flood waters recede, as do glaciers.

Example sentences:

• Between ice ages there were warmer interglacial periods when glaciers receded. 

When something such as a quality, problem, or illness recedes, it becomes weaker, smaller, or less intense. For example:

• Just as I started to think that I was never going to get well, the illness began to recede.

Sediment is solid material that settles at the bottom of a liquid, especially earth and pieces of rock that have been carried along and then left somewhere by water, ice, or wind.

Definition: Inclined from a horizontal or vertical line

Example sentences:

• The new terminal has been designed on three levels, taking advantage of the sloping terrain.

If something submerges, it goes below the surface of some water or another liquid. For example:

• The intertidal zone in marine aquatic environments is the area of the foreshore and seabed that is exposed to the air at low tide and submerged at high tide.
• A convergent plate boundary is where one of the tectonic plates submerge under the other.​
• Hippos are unable to submerge in the few remaining water holes. 

Definition: (Especially of a layer of rock or soil) lie or be situated under (something):

Example senences:

• Steep slopes underlain by stony soils form appealing vineyard sites, but they can be susceptible to rapid soil erosion during storms. Limestone underlies much of the site.

Weathering is the breaking down or dissolving of rocks and minerals on Earth’s surface. Water, ice, acids, salt, and changes in temperature are all agents of weathering.