Alluvial plain: a level or gently sloping surface formed of sediments laid down by streams, generally during flooding.
I heard the word alluvial used in conversation today, for the first time in, oh, my life, maybe. People don't use the word alluvial enough.
The fellow who used the word was giving a presentation to a few of us at my workplace. He was trying to interest us in a 3-D graphics program developed by the company he works for. He was demonstrating the software for us by showing a ship entering a port, which he referred to as "any old-world alluvial port"-- at least that's what I thought I heard him say; I wasn't paying much attention, really.
I wasn't very impressed by the graphics capability he demonstrated, because I couldn't get past the thought that it was lightyears behind the graphics capabilities of the newest multi-player online games. He came close to admitting as much by saying "We've benefited from the the gaming technology", and then gushing about the new video cards such as nvidia.
He talked about the ability of his software to receive data from multiple sources and display it as it comes in, and I thought "Thousands of players on my shard, twenty characters on my screen, running, gating, casting spells on one another; UO." He showed the ship moving through the port and I thought "Running through the woods, seeing the trees go by; EQ." He zoomed in and out and around, changing his perspective, and I thought "Shadowbane".
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