to flow: for water or liquid to run, stream, or trickle along
At its core this word describes liquid in motion. It is the running of fresh water in a channel, the streaming of a spring down a hillside, the trickle of rain and dew out of the clouds, and the flow of tears from the eyes. The Bible reaches for it whenever water is going somewhere.
Its range is set mostly by where the water is and how hard it moves: the quiet running of a private well, the gentle descent of dew, or the rush of floods upon dry ground. Because the word so often names moving water, its plural form is used almost like a noun for the streams and floods themselves.
The same picture stretches naturally into images. Fragrance flows from a garden, tears flow from grieving eyes, and in the poetry of God's coming the very mountains are said to flow before him. In each case the underlying idea is the same steady movement of something pouring or running.
A distinct shade is the descent of water from above: rain and dew that drip and distil out of the sky, and, by extension, teaching that falls as gently as rain. This overlaps with a neighbor word for slow, drop-by-drop dripping (נָטַף), but here the accent stays on the flowing rather than the single drops. Where English needs several verbs (run, stream, drip, distil, pour), the one word covers them all.