headwaters

• head-waters
• head waters

head +‎ waters

• (Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈhɛdˌwɑtɝz/

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headwaters pl (plural only)

1. The source of a river, the set of streams that feed into the river's beginning.
   • 1823, James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers:

     ... but when his brows began to wrinkle with time, and he stood alone, the last of his family, and his particular tribe, the few Delawares, who yet continued about the head-waters of their river, gave him the mournful appellation of Mohegan.

   • 1949 March and April, F. G. Roe, “I Saw Three Englands–2”, in Railway Magazine, page 82:

     Driver Thornhill beckoned me across the cab and pointed out some two miles ahead as we looked across the headwaters of the Eden Valley, the summit cabin at Ais Gill itself, with the summit point and altitude conspicuously indicated.

• “headwater”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

• waterheads