How is a waterway classified as a river?

Answer 1

River
A large natural stream, which may be a waterway.
Creek (North America and Australia)
A small to medium sized natural stream. Sometimes navigable by motor craft and may be intermittent. In some dialects it is pronounced: "crick".
Creek (UK and India)
A tidal inlet, typically in a saltmarsh or mangrove swamp. Alternatively, between enclosed and drained, former saltmarshes or swamps. In these cases, the stream is the tidal stream, the course of the seawater through the creek channel at low and high tide.
Tributary
A contributory stream, or a stream which does not reach the sea but joins another river (a parent river). Sometimes also called a branch or fork.
Brook
A stream smaller than a creek, especially one that is fed by a spring or seep. It is usually small and easily forded. A brook is characterized by its shallowness and its bed being composed solely of rocks.
Crick
In some regions, usually equivalent to "creek". In other regions, may be differentiated from "creek" as follows: smaller than a creek; deeper than creeks of the same widthA river is a natural waterway that transits water through a landscape from higher to lower elevations called divides. The divide determines which way a river will flow. It is an integral component of the water cycle. The water within a river is generally collected from precipitation through surface runoff, groundwater recharge (as seen at baseflow conditions / during periods of lack of precipitation) and release of stored water in natural reservoirs, such as a glacier.

A stream, brook, beck, burn, creek, crick, kill, rill, syke, bayou, rivulet, or run is a body of water with a current, confined within a bed and banks. Streams are important as conduits in the water cycle, instruments in aquifer recharge, and corridors for fish and wildlife migration. The biological habitat in the immediate vicinity of a stream is called a riparian zone. Given the status of the ongoing Holocene extinction event, streams play an important corridor role in connecting fragmented habitats and thus in conserving biodiversity. Stream is also an umbrella term used in the scientific community for all flowing natural waters, regardless of size. The study of streams and waterways in general is known as surface hydrology and is a core element of environmental geography.

Creek is a small stream

Answer 2

it's different in separate parts of the country, too.... where I come from, the Ohio is a river...... big, wide, lotsa water.....so are the Monongahela and the Allegheny....... here in NC, a river can be small enuff that I could throw a rock across it....like the PeeDee....

I always thought a river was the 'last' of the connections to the ocean..... you had rivulets, creeks, streams, and rivers.... and the rivers met either other rivers or the ocean.....

Answer 3

A river is an artificial subset of a drainage system, therefore, the definition is completely subjective, and dependent on how one chooses how to split a continuum into discrete categories. There are different definitions used by hydrologists, biologists, engineers, geomorphologists, and governments, and even different definitions within each these fields.