lake
EnglishEdit
PronunciationEdit
Etymology 1Edit
From Middle English lake (“lake, watercourse, body of water”), from Old English lacu (“lake, pond, pool, stream, watercourse”), from Proto-Germanic *lakō, *lōkiz (“stream, pool, water aggregation", originally "ditch, drainage, seep”), from Proto-Germanic *lekaną (“to leak, drain”), from Proto-Indo-European *leg-, *leǵ- (“to leak”). Cognate with Scots lake (“pond, pool, flowing water of a stream”), Dutch laak (“lake, pond, stream, ditch”), German Low German Lake, Laak (“pooled water; puddle”), German Lache (“pool, puddle”), Faroese løkur (“stream, brook, flow”), Icelandic lækur (“stream, brook, flow”). See also leak, leach.
Despite their similarity in form and meaning, English lake is not related to Latin lacus (“hollow, lake, pond”), Scottish Gaelic loch (“lake”), Ancient Greek λάκκος (lákkos, “waterhole, tank, pond, pit”), all from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”). Instead, this root is represented by Old English lagu (“sea, flood, water, ocean”), through Proto-Germanic *laguz, *lahō (“sea, water”), perhaps related to Albanian lag (“to water, make wet, moisturize”). See lay.
NounEdit
lake (plural lakes)
- (now chiefly dialectal) A small stream of running water; a channel for water; a drain.
- A large, landlocked stretch of water.
-
1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 4, in The Celebrity:
- 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.
-
- 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?
- 1991, Robert DeNiro (actor), Backdraft:
- (obsolete) A pit, or ditch
Usage notesEdit
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. 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.
SynonymsEdit
- See also Wikisaurus:lake
Derived termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
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See alsoEdit
ReferencesEdit
- Astell, Ann W. (1999) Political Allegory in Late Medieval England, Cornell University Press, ISBN 978-0-8014-3560-7, page 192.
- Cameron, Kenneth (1961) English Place Names, B. T. Batsford Limited, ISBN 978-0-416-27990-0, 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 978-1-113-14996-1, page 200.
- Rissanen, Matti (1992) History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics, Walter de Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-013216-8, pages 513–514.
- Sisam, Kenneth (2009) Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose, BiblioBazaar, ISBN 978-1-110-73080-3.
Etymology 2Edit
From Middle English lake, lak, lac (also loke, laik, layke), from Old English lāc (“play, sport, strife, battle, sacrifice, offering, gift, present, booty, message”), from Proto-Germanic *laiką (“play, fight”), *laikaz (“game, dance, hymn, sport”), from Proto-Indo-European *leyg-, *loig-, *leig- (“to bounce, shake, tremble”). Cognate with Old High German leih (“song, melody, music”). Verb form partly from Middle English laken, from Old English lacan, from Proto-Germanic *laikaną, from Proto-Indo-European *leyg-. More at lay.
NounEdit
lake (plural lakes)
Derived termsEdit
VerbEdit
lake (third-person singular simple present lakes, present participle laking, simple past and past participle laked)
Etymology 3Edit
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.
NounEdit
lake (plural lakes)
Etymology 4Edit
From French laque (“lacquer”), from Persian لاک (lāk), from Hindi lakh (lakh), from Sanskrit laksha (laksha, “one hundred thousand”), referring to the number of insects that gather on the trees and make the resin seep out.
NounEdit
lake (plural lakes)
- In dyeing and painting, an often fugitive crimson or vermillion pigment derived from an organic colorant (cochineal or madder, for example) and an inorganic, generally metallic mordant.
Derived termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
VerbEdit
lake (third-person singular simple present lakes, present participle laking, simple past and past participle laked)
- To make lake-red.
AnagramsEdit
DutchEdit
Norwegian BokmålEdit
Etymology 1Edit
From Low German lake
NounEdit
lake m (definite singular laken, indefinite plural laker, definite plural lakene)
Etymology 2Edit
NounEdit
lake m (definite singular laken, indefinite plural laker, definite plural lakene)
Etymology 3Edit
As for Etymology 1.
VerbEdit
lake
ReferencesEdit
- “lake” in The Bokmål Dictionary.
Norwegian NynorskEdit
Etymology 1Edit
From Low German lake
NounEdit
lake m (definite singular laken, indefinite plural lakar, definite plural lakane)
Etymology 2Edit
NounEdit
lake m (definite singular laken, indefinite plural lakar, definite plural lakane)
Etymology 3Edit
As for Etymology 1.
VerbEdit
lake
ReferencesEdit
- “lake” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.