urstromtal
A broad glacial valley formed during an ice age by meltwater flowing roughly parallel to the ice margin.
On the southern margin the plateau falls to a sandy outwash plain which merges into the zone of urstromtäler.
Where it comes from
Unadapted borrowing from German Urstromtal, from ur- (prefix meaning ‘original; primitive’) + Strom (“large river; stream”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *srew- (“to flow; stream”)) + Tal (“valley”) (ultimate etymology uncertain, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *dʰól(h₂)os). The plural form urstromtäler is also an unadapted borrowing from German Urstromtäler.
Adapted from the Wiktionary entry urstromtal (CC BY-SA 4.0).