# lake
## English
### Pronunciation

* (UK, US) enPR: lāk, IPA: /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)
* 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.
** 2015 July 31, “Morphologically Cryptic Amphipod Species Are “Ecological Clones” at Regional but Not at Local Scale: A Case Study of Four Niphargus Species”, in PLOS ONE‎, →DOI:These included other Niphargus species from deep cave lakes and coastal anchihaline caves [23 ] and Gammarus and Echinogammarus amphipods that live only in permanently watered streams [21 ,24 ].
* 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?
* (now chiefly dialectal) A small stream of running water; a channel for water; a drain.
* (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

* Balsam Lake
* Bassenthwaite Lake
* Big Lake
* Big Lakes County
* bore lake
* brine lake
* Brome Lake
* Canyon Lake
* Chengcing Lake
* Clay Lake
* Clear Lake
* crater lake
* data lake
* Dease Lake
* Dease Lake Post
* Detroit Lakes
* Devils Lake
* Diamond Lake
* dry lake
* East Lake
* Eastlake
* Elbow Lake
* ephemeral lake
* finger lake
* fjord lake
* glacial lake
* glacial lake outburst flood
* go jump in the lake
* Goose Lake
* Grand Lake
* Great Bitter Lake
* Great Lakes
* Great Salt Lake
* Green Lake
* Groom Lake
* Hamburg lake
* Hubbard Lake
* interlake
* intermittent lake
* intralake
* kettle lake
* Knob Lake
* lac lake
* lacrimal lake
* Lake Albert
* Lake Andes
* Lake and Peninsula Borough
* Lake Asphaltites
* Lake Baikal
* lake ball
* lakebed
* Lake Borgne
* Lake Buena Vista
* Lake Butler
* Lake Chad
* Lake Champlain
* Lake City
* Lake Country
* Lake County
* Lake District
* lake dwelling
* lake effect
* lake-effect
* lakefill
* lake fly
* lakefront
* lakeful
* Lake Geneva
* Lake Granby
* lakehead
* Lake House
* lakehouse
* lake itch
* Lake Jessie
* Lake Kyoga, Lake Kioga
* lakeland
* lake lawyer
* lakeless
* lakelet
* lakelike
* lakelore
* Lake Louise
* Lake Macquarie
* Lake Nasser
* lakeness
* Lake Neuchâtel
* Lake of Bays
* lake of fire
* Lake of the Woods
* lake of Wada
* lake pigment
* Lake Pleasant
* lakeport
* Lake Providence
* lake quillwort
* Laker
* lake retention time
* Lakes
* lakescape
* lakeshore
* lake shore disease
* lakeside, Lakeside
* Lake Station
* lake stratification
* lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens)
* Lake Tai
* Lake Tanganyika
* Lake Thun
* Laketown
* lake trout
* Lake Victoria
* lakeview
* Lake Villa
* lake village
* Lake Village
* Lake Wakatipu
* lakeward
* lakewards
* lakewater
* lakeweed
* lakewide
* Lake Winnipeg
* Lake Wobegon
* lakish
* Lakism
* Lakist
* laky
* lava lake
* Llanquihue Lake
* Lower Lake
* Lynn Lake
* Maroon Lake
* maroon lake
* Mayhew Lake
* megalake
* meromictic lake
* Moses Lake
* Muskoka Lakes
* Nahuel Huapi Lake
* Niagara-on-the-Lake
* nonlake
* Otsego Lake
* oxbow lake
* palaeolake
* paleolake
* Palmer Lake
* paternoster lake
* Pine Lake
* playa lake
* prairie lake
* quake lake
* Rainy Lake
* Red Lake County
* Red Lake Falls
* Reindeer Lake
* Rideau Lakes
* rose lake
* Rotorua Lakes
* Round Lake Beach
* Salem Lakes
* salt lake
* Salt Lake City
* Salt Lake County
* seasonal lake
* Shell Lake
* Silver Lake
* Slender West Lake
* Smoky Lake
* Smoky Lake County
* soda lake
* Southlake
* South Lakeland
* Spirit Lake
* splake
* Split Lake
* Spring Lake
* Storm Lake
* subglacial lake
* Timber Lake
* Todos los Santos Lake
* Trent Lakes
* trough lake
* Trout Lake
* Turquoise Lake
* Twin Lakes
* underwater lake
* Westlake
* West Lake
* wine lake

##### Related terms

* lacustrine

##### Translations
#### See also

* billabong
* lagoon
* pond
* talav
* tarn

#### Further reading

* lake on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* 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

lake (plural lakes)
* (obsolete) An offering, sacrifice, gift.
* (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)
* (obsolete) To present an offering.
* (dialectal, Northern, UK) To leap, jump, exert oneself, play.
* 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)
* (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)
* 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.
    Synonym: lac
** 1954 August, Basil M. Bazley, “Three Scottish Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 534:The colour scheme of the North British Railway—dark gamboge for the engines and lake for the coaches—looked very smart when new and clean, but these shades did not possess good wearing qualities.
** 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.
* 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)
* To make lake-red.

### References

* ↑ “lake, n.3.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, September 2021.
* ↑ Kroonen, Guus (2013) “Lagu-”, in Alexander Lubotsky, editor, Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 11)‎, Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN

### Anagrams

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

## Albanian
### Verb

lake
* second-person singular present admirative of laj

## Baltic Romani
### Pronoun

lake
* (Litovska) dative of joj

#### Declension

* ↑ The ablative is in decline in Lithuanian Romani

## Dutch
### Pronunciation

* Audio:(file)

### Verb

lake
* (dated or formal) singular present subjunctive of laken

### Anagrams

* kale

## Mauritian Creole
### Etymology

From French queue.

### Noun

lake
* tail
* 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)
* (preservative) pickle, brine

### Etymology 2

From Old Norse laki.

#### Noun

lake m (definite singular laken, indefinite plural laker, definite plural lakene)
* (fish) burbot, eelpout (species Lota lota)

### Etymology 3

As for Etymology 1.

#### Verb

lake
* 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)
* (preservative) pickle, brine

### Etymology 2

From Old Norse laki.

#### Noun

lake m (definite singular laken, indefinite plural lakar, definite plural lakane)
* (fish) burbot, eelpout (species Lota lota)

### Etymology 3

As for Etymology 1.

#### Verb

lake
* to pickle, put in brine

### References

* “lake” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

## Serbo-Croatian
### Adjective

lake
* inflection of lak:
** masculine accusative plural
** feminine genitive singular
** feminine nominative/accusative/vocative plural

## Seychellois Creole
### Etymology

From French queue.

### Noun

lake
* tail
* queue

### References

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

## Swahili
### Adjective

lake
* ji class$_{(V)}$ 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
* brine

##### Declension
#### References

* ↑ Hellquist, Elof (1922) “1. lake”, in Svensk etymologisk ordbok [Swedish etymological dictionary]‎ (in Swedish), Lund: C. W. K. Gleerups förlag, page 394
* ↑ “lake”, in Svenska Akademiens ordbok [Dictionary of the Swedish Academy]‎ (in Swedish), 1937

### Etymology 2

From Old Norse laki.

#### Noun

lake c
* 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)
* ↑ Hellquist, Elof (1922) “2. lake”, in Svensk etymologisk ordbok [Swedish etymological dictionary]‎ (in Swedish), Lund: C. W. K. Gleerups förlag, pages 394-395
* ↑ “lake”, in Svenska Akademiens ordbok [Dictionary of the Swedish Academy]‎ (in Swedish), 1937

### Anagrams

* elak, kela, leka

## Turkish
### Etymology

From French laqué.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈla.ce/
* Hyphenation: la‧ke

### Adjective

lake
* Polished with lacquer.

#### Declension

For negative forms, use the appropriate form of değil.

#### Related terms

* lak

### References

* ↑ Nişanyan, Sevan (2002–) “lake”, in Nişanyan Sözlük

### Further reading

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