Water Cycle Word Search Printable

Print 16 water cycle words with an answer key, or swap in the forms of water or the groundwater list.

Name Date

Water Cycle Word Search

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0 of 16 words found

LSDALYBTSCHPPBT

TLBALAKEUDIDRED

CLOUDWATERSHEDX

GLACIERDRUWUCZD

GYOYDSUAKRSTISI

RESCLLWACTLCPVE

OGOLEVAPORATION

UMLEGASCQMTHTDJ

NVICBXBZOIZDATF

DKDHRIVERYZPTUB

WNLCONDENSATION

AEARONAISDKROLQ

TRANSPIRATIONFH

ELINFILTRATIONT

RUNOFFENNDRRAIN

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

EvaporationEVAPORATION
CondensationCONDENSATION
PrecipitationPRECIPITATION
TranspirationTRANSPIRATION
RunoffRUNOFF
InfiltrationINFILTRATION
CycleCYCLE
SolidSOLID
GasGAS
RainRAIN
CloudCLOUD
LakeLAKE
RiverRIVER
GlacierGLACIER
GroundwaterGROUNDWATER
WatershedWATERSHED

16 of 20 words from the Water Cycle Key Terms list.

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Answer key: Water Cycle Word Search

LSDALYBTSCHPPBT

TLBALAKEUDIDRED

CLOUDWATERSHEDX

GLACIERDRUWUCZD

GYOYDSUAKRSTISI

RESCLLWACTLCPVE

OGOLEVAPORATION

UMLEGASCQMTHTDJ

NVICBXBZOIZDATF

DKDHRIVERYZPTUB

WNLCONDENSATION

AEARONAISDKROLQ

TRANSPIRATIONFH

ELINFILTRATIONT

RUNOFFENNDRRAIN

EVAPORATION, CONDENSATION, PRECIPITATION, TRANSPIRATION, RUNOFF, INFILTRATION, CYCLE, SOLID, GAS, RAIN, CLOUD, LAKE, RIVER, GLACIER, GROUNDWATER, WATERSHED

Next step Find melting and freezing in the states of matter puzzle Find more rivers, lakes and landforms

All 91 words

Steps of the Water Cycle 18

Advection Water moving through the atmosphere.
Condensation The change of water vapor into liquid; it makes clouds and dew.
Continuous Describes the water cycle: its changes of form never stop.
Cycle A set of changes that goes round and round; water's is also called hydrologic.
Discharge The return of groundwater to the surface, as at a spring.
Evaporation The change of liquid water into gas at its surface; the Sun's energy drives it.
Gravity The pull that makes precipitation fall and water sink through soil and rock.
Hydrologic The word in another name for the water cycle.
Infiltration The process by which water on the ground surface enters the soil.
Percolation The movement and filtering of water down through porous material.
Precipitation Water that falls from clouds to the Earth's surface under gravity.
Recharge The refilling of groundwater from the surface.
Runoff Water that flows over the ground when it can no longer soak into the soil fast enough.
Seep A place where groundwater comes out at the surface, as it does at a spring.
Snowmelt Runoff produced by melting snow.
Streamflow The flow in rivers that moves runoff towards the oceans.
Sublimation The change of ice straight into vapor, with no liquid stage.
Transpiration The movement of water through a plant and out of its leaves, stems and flowers.

Show all 91 words (73 more)

Forms of Water 18

Cloud A visible mass of tiny droplets or ice crystals hanging in the atmosphere.
Crystals Ice ones, with droplets, make up a cloud.
Dew Droplets that appear on thin, exposed objects in the morning or evening.
Droplets Miniature drops of liquid; a cloud is a visible mass of them.
Fog Tiny droplets or ice crystals held in the air near the Earth's surface.
Freshwater Glacial ice and ice sheets hold about 69% of the world's supply of it.
Frozen Ice caps and glaciers can store water in this state for thousands of years.
Gas The state of water vapor.
Hail Solid precipitation in balls or irregular lumps of ice.
Ice Frozen water; as glaciers, the largest store of fresh water on Earth.
Liquid The state that water vapor changes into in condensation.
Pellets Small pieces of ice that fall in cold weather; not the same thing as hail.
Rain Liquid water falling from clouds; one of the main forms of precipitation.
Saltwater What the open sea brings to an estuary.
Sleet In American English, ice pellets; in Commonwealth usage, rain and snow mixed.
Snow Precipitation that can pile up over many years and form a glacier.
Solid The state of ice and of hail.
Vapor Water as a gas, generally invisible to the eye.

Where Water Collects 19

Banks The two sides of the channel that a stream flows within.
Basin The hollow in the land that a lake sits in.
Bed The bottom of the channel that a stream flows within.
Channel The path a stream flows in; another word for it is watercourse.
Fen A kind of peatland; one of the four main kinds of wetland.
Glacier A lasting body of ice that moves under its own weight.
Gulf A large bay; with the seas, one of the divisions of the ocean.
Ice cap A mass of ice covering less than 50,000 square kilometers of land.
Iceberg A piece of freshwater ice, more than 15 meters long, floating free of a glacier.
Lake A relatively large, fixed body of water in a basin surrounded by dry land.
Meander A bend in a river; rivers seldom run a straight course.
Mouth The end of a river, where it meets the sea or a lake.
Ocean It holds 97% of the water on the planet.
Pond A small, still body of water, smaller than a lake.
Reservoir An enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to store fresh water.
River A natural stream of fresh water flowing towards an ocean, a lake or another one like it.
Sea A division of the ocean.
Stream A body of surface water flowing within the bed and banks of a channel.
Tributary A stream that flows into a larger stream or a lake, not straight into the sea.

Water Under the Ground 18

Aquifer A layer of permeable rock or loose material under the ground that bears water.
Bedrock Solid rock; groundwater keeps dissolving the permeable kind.
Dolomite A carbonate rock, often found with limestone; groundwater dissolves both into cave systems.
Fractures Cracks in rock formations that hold groundwater.
Gravel Loose material that can make up an aquifer, with sand and silt.
Groundwater Water beneath the Earth's surface, in the pores of soil and rock.
Limestone A permeable bedrock that groundwater dissolves, making cave systems.
Permeable Describes rock that lets water pass through it.
Phreatic Describes the saturated zone whose upper surface is the water table.
Pores The small spaces in rock and soil that groundwater fills.
Porous Full of small holes, like the materials that water percolates through.
Saturated Completely filled with water, as the ground is below the water table.
Silt Loose grains between sand and clay in size; with gravel and sand it can make up an aquifer.
Spring A natural exit where groundwater flows out onto the surface.
Trickle To flow in a thin stream; the Latin root of percolation means to do this through something.
Underground Beneath the surface, where an aquifer lies.
Water table The upper surface of the zone where the ground is saturated.
Zone The ground below the water table is called the one of saturation.

Watersheds and Water Science 18

Affluent Another word for a tributary.
Constant The mass of water on Earth stays fairly close to this over time.
Converge To come together, as surface water does at the low point of a drainage basin.
Dam A barrier that holds back water; a reservoir is the enlarged lake behind one.
Divide The line of ridges and hills that separates one drainage basin from the next.
Drainage With the word basin, it names the land whose flowing water converges on one point.
Hills With ridges, the high ground that makes up a drainage divide.
Hydrologist A person who practices the science of water.
Hydrology The scientific study of the movement and distribution of water.
Hydrosphere The Earth's water as a whole; a spring is a component of it.
Main stem The larger stream that a tributary flows into.
Overland Describes the flow that is another name for surface runoff.
Perimeter The outer edge of a drainage basin; the divide runs along it.
Rainwater An excess of it can no longer soak in and becomes surface runoff.
Ridge A long raised feature of the land; a drainage divide follows these and hills.
Stormwater Water from a storm; an excess of it runs off over the ground.
Watercourse Another word for the channel a stream flows in; it may be dry at times.
Watershed In North American usage, the area of land whose surface water all drains to one point.

How this list was compiled: Own work: the word list and every clue were written for this page. The facts in the clues were checked on 2026-10-07 against English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), among them the articles on the water cycle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cycle), precipitation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precipitation), groundwater (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundwater), the drainage basin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drainage_basin) and the glacier (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier). Licence: own work

How it works

This water cycle word search, printable with its answer key, traces the path water takes: the steps of the cycle, the forms water takes, where it collects, how it moves under the ground, and the watersheds that gather it.

Read the full guide

A forms of water word search

Pick Forms of Water under Start from a list and the sheet prints under that title. Its 18 words cover the three states, Liquid, Solid and Gas, and what falls or hangs in the air: Rain, Snow, Sleet, Hail, Dew, Fog and Cloud.

Water vocabulary, above and below the ground

Steps of the Water Cycle has 18 words, from Evaporation and Condensation to Infiltration, Percolation and Advection. Where Water Collects has 19, such as Tributary, Reservoir, Meander and Iceberg. Water Under the Ground has 18: Aquifer, Water table, Permeable and Saturated among them. Easy Water Cycle keeps to 30 words of 3 to 5 letters.

Vapor reads inside Evaporation, and Ice inside Precipitation, so the key terms leave Vapor and Ice to Forms of Water.
Water table, Ice cap and Main stem each hide as one run of letters: WATERTABLE.

Questions and answers

What are the steps of the water cycle?

Evaporation and transpiration lift water into the air as vapor. Condensation turns the vapor into clouds. Precipitation brings it down as rain, snow or hail. Runoff and infiltration carry it over and into the ground, back towards the ocean.

What are the three forms of water?

Liquid, solid and gas: water, ice and water vapor. Vapor is generally invisible; a cloud is a visible mass of tiny liquid droplets or ice crystals.

Where is most of the water on Earth?

In the ocean, which holds 97% of the water on the planet. Glacial ice and ice sheets hold about 69% of the fresh water, and about 30% of the readily available fresh water is groundwater.

Does the water cycle word search have an answer key?

Yes, as page 2 on Letter or A4. For storms, clouds and forecasting tools, print the weather word search.

All 91 words

Steps of the Water Cycle 18

Forms of Water 18

Where Water Collects 19

Water Under the Ground 18

Watersheds and Water Science 18

How it works

A forms of water word search

Water vocabulary, above and below the ground

Questions and answers

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