land formn.

1893 W. J. McGee in Congrès Géol. Internat. 1891 199 The systematic examination of land forms and their interpretation as records of geologic history introduces a new branch of geologic science, called ‘physical geography’ or ‘physiography’ by different writers, which has been designated ‘geomorphic geology’ by Powell and the ‘new geology’ or ‘geomorphology’ by the writer; but the term ‘geomorphy’, first employed in a somewhat different connection by Sir William Dawson, though never extensively used with this meaning, is preferable.

1910 Encycl. Brit. XI. 633/2 Thus new land forms are created—valleys of curious complexity, for example—by the ‘capture’ and diversion of the water of one river by another.

1938 L. D. Stamp Physical Geogr. & Geol. ix. 142 The land forms in deserts developed in sedimentary rocks are similar to those in damper temperate climates except that slopes are usually sharper and steeper.

1970 R. J. Small Study of Landforms i. 8 Classification can be attempted not only of individual kinds of landform (such as slopes, cliffs, terraces, beaches, lakes, volcanoes, planation surfaces and so on) or types of process.., but of landform assemblages.

1893 W. M. Davis in National Geographic Mag. 10 July 73 Every land-form passes through a systematic series of changes from its youth, when its form is defined chiefly by constructional processes, past its maturity, when the processes of sub-aerial sculpture have carved a variety of mouldings and channellings, to its old age in which..denudation reduces the mass to base-level.

1899 W. M. Davis in Geogr. Jrnl. XIV. 485 Where the forces of uplift or deformation have lately..initiated a cycle of changes, the destructive forces can have accomplished but little work, and the land-form is ‘young’.