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[RIV-yah-lit] 
1. a small stream or brook: "A mere two days after the flood had come tearing through our dry riverbed campsite, its flow had been reduced to a tame rivulet."
Origin:
Approximately 1587; possibly borrowed from Italian, 'rivoletto,' diminutive of 'rivolo': small stream, and also from Latin, 'rivulus,' diminutive of 'rivus': stream, brook, which is related to the root 'rei-': to flow, run. In action:
"The sleek Andrea Doria wasn't supposed to go down, just like that other 'unsinkable' paean to luxury. The Doria had state-of-the-art radar. A double hull, divided into watertight compartments, virtually guaranteed its buoyancy. But once hit, it began to list a severe 20 degrees, a sign it would sink.
And like the Titanic, which was short on lifeboats, the Andrea Doria was unable to lower the rescue craft on the port side, where passengers instinctively congregated. Fortunately, seven vessels responded to distress calls, participating in what became a six-hour rescue effort. In all, 1,660 people were saved; 51 died -- compared with 1,513 lost on that other ship.
...
In television news at the time, live reports were rare. But the producer Don Hewitt appeared on the scene with the CBS News anchor Douglas Edwards. With cameras rolling, they watched the liner keel over, propellers and rudder exposed, then nose down into the water and disappear. Theirs was the only film of the event.
The drama made for good, if overwrought, television. The ABC anchor Edward P. Morgan's daughter, an Andrea Doria passenger, was missing. After finding her, Morgan, on air, recalled being 'pushed down the elevator shaft of the subbasement of despair and raised again to the heights of incredible joy, washed, one suspects, with a slightly extravagant rivulet of some heavenly Champagne.'
Erica Sanders. "That Other Ship," [Review of 'Desperate Hours: The Epic Rescue of the Andrea Doria.' by Richard Goldstein.] The New York Times (December 2, 2001).
"It is perhaps a sign of the intensity of the scandal at the Enron Corporation that the resignation of the man most identified with the company -- its chairman, Kenneth L. Lay -- seemed like just a rivulet in a flood of developments."
Kurt Eichenwald. "January 20-26: Business; Enron Watch," The New York Times (January 27, 2002).
"Recently, I tried the same move on another woman, but my efforts met with far different results. Her name was Jennifer Of Winnetka, and I spied her bathing as dawn broke and heralded the time when true dreams most often visit mortals. It was a little awkward, because she wasn't bathing in the usual sea or mountain rivulet, and I had to sort of use my bulls' horns to nudge her shower curtain out of my way. She looked up from washing her hair and, like so many of these women today, shrieked in sheer terror. When I tried to speak to her in seductive tones, she squirted a whole bottle of Aveda shampoo in my eyes. Needless to say, I begot no demigods with Jennifer Of Winnetka on that day."
Zeus, King of Gods. "Today's Women Don't Like It When You Come To Them As A Bull Or Swan," The Onion.com (April 15, 1999).
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