lake

English

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) enPR: lāk, IPA^(key): /leɪk/

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪk

Etymology 1

Arose from a conflation of the form of inherited Middle English lake (“small stream of running water, pool, lake”) with Middle English lac (“lake”), from Old French lac (“lake”) or Latin lacus (“lake, basin, tank”), see lac. The former, lake (“stream, pool, lake”), is inherited from Old English lacu (“stream, pool, expanse of water, lake”), from Proto-West Germanic *laku, from Proto-Germanic *lakō (“stream, pool, water aggregation”), ultimately derived from Proto-Indo-European *leg- (“to leak, drain”). It is related to Dutch laak (“stream, drainage ditch, pond”), German Low German Lake, Laak (“drainage, marshland”), German Lache (“puddle”), Icelandic lækur (“stream”).

Despite their similarity in form and meaning, Old English lacu is not related to English lay (“lake”), Latin lacus (“hollow, lake, pond”), Scottish Gaelic loch (“lake”), Ancient Greek λάκκος (lákkos, “waterhole, tank, pond, pit”), all from Proto-Indo-European *lókus, *l̥kwés (“lake, pool”).

Noun

lake (plural lakes)

1. A large, landlocked stretch of water or similar liquid.
   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair.

2. A large amount of liquid; as, a wine lake.
   • 1991, Robert DeNiro (actor), Backdraft:

     So you punched out a window for ventilation. Was that before or after you noticed you were standing in a lake of gasoline?

3. (now chiefly dialectal) A small stream of running water; a channel for water; a drain.
4. (obsolete) A pit, or ditch.

Usage notes

As with the names of rivers, mounts and mountains, the names of lakes are typically formed by adding the word before or after the unique term: Lake Titicaca or Great Slave Lake. Generally speaking, names formed using adjectives or attributives see lake added to the end, as with Reindeer Lake; lake is usually added before proper names, as with Lake Michigan. This derives from the earlier but now uncommon form lake of ~: for instance, the 19th-century Lake of Annecy is now usually simply Lake Annecy. There are exceptions to this generalization, however, including notably the names of the individual Finger Lakes (e.g. Oneida Lake, Seneca Lake, Cayuga Lake). It frequently occurs, however, that foreign placenames are misunderstood as proper nouns, as with the Chinese Taihu (“Great Lake”) and Qinghai (“Blue Sea”) being frequently rendered as Lake Tai and Qinghai Lake.

Synonyms

• See Thesaurus:lake

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• billabong
• lagoon
• pond
• talav
• tarn

Further reading

• Astell, Ann W. (1999) Political Allegory in Late Medieval England, Cornell University Press, →ISBN, page 192.
• Cameron, Kenneth (1961) English Place Names, B. T. Batsford Limited, →ISBN, page 164.
• Ferguson, Robert (1858) English Surnames: And their Place in the Teutonic Family, G. Routledge & Co., page 368.
• Maetzner, Eduard Adolf Ferdinand (2009) An English Grammar; Methodical, Analytical, and Historical, BiblioBazaar, LLC, →ISBN, page 200.
• Rissanen, Matti (1992) History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, pages 513–514.
• Sisam, Kenneth (2009) Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose, BiblioBazaar, →ISBN.

Etymology 2

From Northern Middle English lake, lak, lac (also laik, layke; Southern loke), from Old English lāc (“play, sport, strife, battle, sacrifice, offering, gift, present, booty, message”), from Proto-West Germanic *laik, from Proto-Germanic *laikaz (“game, dance, hymn, sport”), from Proto-Indo-European *leyg- (“to bounce, shake, tremble”). Cognate with Old High German leih (“song, melody, music”), Old Norse leikr (whence Danish leg (“game”), Swedish leka (“to play”)), and Gothic 𐌻𐌰𐌹𐌺𐍃 (laiks, “dance”); Doublet of lek.

Verb form partly from Middle English laken, from Old English lacan, from Proto-Germanic *laikaną, from Proto-Indo-European *leyg-. More at lay, -lock.

Alternative forms

• laik

Noun

English Wikipedia has an article on:

lác

Wikipedia

lake (plural lakes)

1. (obsolete) An offering, sacrifice, gift.
2. (dialectal) Play; sport; game; fun; glee.

Related terms

• bridelock
• wedlock

Verb

lake (third-person singular simple present lakes, present participle laking, simple past and past participle laked)

1. (obsolete) To present an offering.
2. (dialectal, Northern, UK) To leap, jump, exert oneself, play.
3. Subject biological cells to repeated cycles of freezing and thawing until lysis.

Etymology 3

From Middle English lake, from Old English *lacen or Middle Dutch laken; both from Proto-Germanic *lakaną (“linen; cloth; sheet”). Cognate with Dutch lake (“linen”), Dutch laken (“linen; bedsheet”), German Laken, Danish lagan, Swedish lakan, Icelandic lak, lakan.

Noun

lake (plural lakes)

1. (obsolete) A kind of fine, white linen.

Etymology 4

From French laque (“lacquer”), from Persian لاک (lâk), from Hindi लाख (lākh), from Sanskrit लाक्षा (lākṣā). Doublet of lac and lacquer.

Noun

lake (plural lakes)

1. In dyeing and painting, an often fugitive crimson or vermilion pigment derived from an organic colorant (cochineal or madder, for example) and an inorganic, generally metallic mordant.
   • 1997, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 24, in Mason & Dixon, 1st US edition, New York: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, part One: Latitudes and Departures, page 242:

     Jeremiah found himself indoors, perfecting his Draftsmanship, bending all day over the work-table, grinding and mixing his own Inks,— siftings and splashes ev'rywhere of King's Yellow, Azure, red Orpiment, Indian lake, Verdigris, Indigo, and Umber.

   Synonym: lac

2. In the composition of colors for use in products intended for human consumption, made by extending on a substratum of alumina, a salt prepared from one of the certified water-soluble straight colors.

   The name of a lake prepared by extending the aluminum salt prepared from FD&C Blue No. 1 upon the substratum would be FD&C Blue No. 1--Aluminum Lake.

Derived terms

• crimson lake
• madder lake
• lake pigment
• lake-red

Translations

Verb

lake (third-person singular simple present lakes, present participle laking, simple past and past participle laked)

1. To make lake-red.

References

Anagrams

• Akel, Alek, Kale, Leak, ka le, kale, leak

Dutch

Pronunciation

• Audio

  (file)

Verb

lake

1. (dated or formal) singular present subjunctive of laken

Anagrams

• kale

Mauritian Creole

Etymology

From French queue.

Noun

lake

1. tail
2. queue

References

• Baker, Philip & Hookoomsing, Vinesh Y. 1987. Dictionnaire de créole mauricien. Morisyen – English – Français

Norwegian Bokmål

Norwegian Wikipedia has an article on:

Lake (konservering)

Wikipedia ^no

Etymology 1

From Low German lake.

Noun

lake m (definite singular laken, indefinite plural laker, definite plural lakene)

1. (preservative) pickle, brine

Etymology 2

Norwegian Wikipedia has an article on:

Lake (fisk)

Wikipedia ^no

From Old Norse laki.

Noun

lake m (definite singular laken, indefinite plural laker, definite plural lakene)

1. (fish) burbot, eelpout (species Lota lota)

Etymology 3

As for Etymology 1.

Verb

lake

1. to pickle, put in brine

References

• “lake” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

Norwegian Nynorsk

Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia has an article on:

lake

Wikipedia ⁿⁿ

Etymology 1

From Low German lake.

Noun

lake m (definite singular laken, indefinite plural lakar, definite plural lakane)

1. (preservative) pickle, brine

Etymology 2

Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia has an article on:

Fisken lake

Wikipedia ⁿⁿ

From Old Norse laki.

Noun

lake m (definite singular laken, indefinite plural lakar, definite plural lakane)

1. (fish) burbot, eelpout (species Lota lota)

Etymology 3

As for Etymology 1.

Verb

lake

1. to pickle, put in brine

References

• “lake” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

Serbo-Croatian

Adjective

lake

1. inflection of lak:
   1. masculine accusative plural
   2. feminine genitive singular
   3. feminine nominative/accusative/vocative plural

Seychellois Creole

Etymology

From French queue.

Noun

lake

1. tail
2. queue

References

• Danielle D’Offay et Guy Lionnet, Diksyonner Kreol - Franse / Dictionnaire Créole Seychellois - Français

Swahili

Adjective

lake

1. Ji class inflected form of -ake.

Swedish

Etymology 1

Borrowed from Middle Low German lâke (“brine; standing water”), from Old Saxon *laca, from Proto-West Germanic *laku (“steam, pool”).

Noun

lake c

1. brine

Declension

References

Etymology 2

Swedish Wikipedia has an article on:

lake

Wikipedia ^sv

From Old Norse laki.

Noun

lake c

1. burbot (Lota lota spp.)

   Synonym: (colloquial) slemhelge

Declension

References

• lake in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• lake in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• lake in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)

Anagrams

• elak, kela, leka

Turkish

Etymology

From French laqué.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈla.ce/
• Hyphenation: la‧ke

Adjective

lake

1. Polished with lacquer.

Declension

Related terms

References

Further reading

• “lake”, in Turkish dictionaries, Türk Dil Kurumu
• Çağbayır, Yaşar (2007) “lake”, in Ötüken Türkçe Sözlük (in Turkish), Istanbul: Ötüken Neşriyat, page 2931