lake

See also: Lake, Lãke, lakë, lakę, and łąkę

English

Pronunciation

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

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪk

Etymology 1

A mountain lake.

Arose from a contamination 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”). 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, the word 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.
   • 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 222716698:

     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. 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

• Bassenthwaite Lake
• Big Lake
• Clear Lake
• Detroit Lakes
• Devils Lake
• ephemeral lake
• Great Lakes
• Great Salt Lake
• Green Lake
• Lake Andes
• Lake and Peninsula Borough
• Lake Asphaltites
• Lake Chad
• Lake City
• Lake County
• Lake District
• Lake Geneva
• lakelet
• Lake Louise
• lakeness
• Lake of the Woods
• Lakes
• lakeside, Lakeside
• Lake Station
• lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens)
• Lake Tai
• Lake Thun
• lake trout
• Lake Village
• lakeward
• lakish
• Moses Lake
• oxbow lake
• Pine Lake
• Red Lake County
• Red Lake Falls
• Rideau Lakes
• Salt Lake City
• Salt Lake County
• Shell Lake
• Silver Lake
• Spirit Lake
• Storm Lake
• Timber Lake
• Trent Lakes
• Trout Lake
• West Lake

 

Translations

See lake/translations § Noun.

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 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, -lock.

Noun

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. (chiefly dialectal) To leap, jump, exert oneself, play.

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 लक्ष (lakṣa, “one hundred thousand”), referring to the number of insects that gather on the trees and make the resin seep out. Doublet of lakh.

Noun

lake (plural lakes)

1. 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.
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.

   For example, 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
• lake-red
• madder lake

Translations

a kind of coloring agent

• Arabic: صِبْغُ اَللَّك‎ m (ṣibḡu l-lak)
• Bulgarian: светлочервен лак m (svetločerven lak)
• Catalan: laca (ca) f
• Finnish: lakka (fi)
• French: laque (fr) f
• German: ^{(please verify)} Farbstoff (de) m
• Greek: λάκη f (láki)
• Hebrew: לכה‎ (he) f (lakah)
• Italian: lacca (it) f
• Japanese: ニス (ja) (nisu), 漆 (ja) (うるし, urushi)

• Korean: 래커 (raekeo)
• Macedonian: лак m (lak)
• Norwegian: ^{(please verify)} fargestoff n
• Polish: lakier (pl) m
• Portuguese: laca (pt) f
• Russian: лак (ru) m (lak)
• Spanish: laca (es) f
• Swahili: ziwa (sw)
• Thai: ครั่ง (khràng)

Verb

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

1. To make lake-red.

Anagrams

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

---

Dutch

Pronunciation

• Audio

  (file)

Verb

lake

1. (archaic) 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

Etymology 1

From Low German lake

Noun

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

1. (preservative) pickle, brine

Etymology 2

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

Etymology 1

From Low German lake

Noun

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

1. (preservative) pickle, brine

Etymology 2

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

Declension of lake
	Singular		Plural
	Indefinite	Definite	Indefinite	Definite
Nominative	lake	laken	lakar	lakarna
Genitive	lakes	lakens	lakars	lakarnas

Etymology 2

From Old Norse laki.

Noun

lake c

1. burbot (Lota lota spp.)

Declension

Declension of lake
	Singular		Plural
	Indefinite	Definite	Indefinite	Definite
Nominative	lake	laken	lakar	lakarna
Genitive	lakes	lakens	lakars	lakarnas

Anagrams

• elak, kela, leka