creek
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: krēk
ipa: /kɹiːk/
ipa: /kɹik/
ipa: /kɹɪk/
ipa: /kɹiːk/
note: Ottawa Valley
ipa: [kɹiːk]
note: Ottawa Valley
ipa: [kɹɪk]
rhymes: -iːk
rhymes: -ɪk
homophone: creak
homophone: crick
Forms: form: creeks
form: crick
form: crike
form: cryke
form: crik
Etymology: From Middle English creke, kreke, creake, of unclear origin.
It existed alongside a second variant in Middle English cryke, krike, cricke, from Old Norse kriki. The forms creke, kreke, creake possibly continue Old English *creca (attested in the diminutive crecca (“creek, bay, wharf”) also found in Anglo-Latin as creca, crecca), from Proto-West Germanic *krekō, from Proto-Germanic *krekô, *krekuz (“corner, hook, angle, bend, bight”), from Proto-Indo-European *ger- (“to turn, to wind”). Compare typologically English bight, akin to bend, bow.
See also Old Dutch creka, crika (“inlet, cove, creek”), Old Norse kriki (“cove, bight”), kríkr (“angle, corner, nook, bay”), Old Norse kraki (“pole with a hook, anchor”), and possibly Old Norse krókr (“hook, bend, bight”). Modern cognates include West Frisian kreek (“creek”), Dutch kreek (“creek, cove, inlet, bight”), and French crique (“cove”) (borrowed from Germanic).
Early British colonists of Australia and the Americas used the term in the usual British way, to name inlets; as settlements followed the inlets upstream and inland, the names were retained and creek came to be used to refer to any small waterway. A similar semantic development occurred in Dutch and French, where the word originally meant "bay" but came to mean "stream" especially in the French and Dutch colonies (French Guiana, Dutch Guiana and Indonesia).
Senses: examples: text: Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea.
ref: 1853, John Ruskin, “Torcello”, in The Stones of Venice, volume II (The Sea-Stories), London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, § I, page 11:
text: There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which, taken any way you please, is bad, / And strands them in forsaken guts and creeks / No decent soul would think of visiting.
ref: 1887 March 21, Rudyard Kipling, “Kidnapped”, in Plain Tales from the Hills, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co.; London: W. Thacker & Co., published 1888, →OCLC, page 111:
glosses: A small inlet, often saltwater, leading to the sea or to the main channel of a river, especially a river estuary.
glosses: The inner part of a port that is used as a dock for small boats.
examples: text: We all feel it Looming, even when we're awake, out there ahead someplace, the way you come to feel a River or Creek ahead, before anything else,— sound, sky, vegetation,— may have announced it.
ref: 1997, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 67, in Mason & Dixon, 1st US edition, New York: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, part Two: America, page 650:
glosses: A stream of water, typically a stream of freshwater smaller than a river; in Australia, also used of river-sized bodies of water.
glosses: Any turn or winding.
Synonyms: sense: non-British:
word: beck
word: brook
word: burn
word: stream
sense: regional US terms:
english: Ohio
translation: Ohio
word: run
word: brook
word: branch
english: Mississippi, Alabama
translation: Mississippi, Alabama
word: bayou
Derived terms: Antietam Creek
Barking Creek
Battle Creek
Bear Creek
Beaver Creek
Beavercreek
Belle Creek
Big Creek
Black Creek
Bone Creek
Bow Creek
Chinle Creek
Clear Creek
Coal Creek
Coconut Creek
Cooper's Creek
creekbank
creekbed
creek bed
creek boat
creeker
creekfish
creekfront
creekless
creeklet
creekline
Creekmouth
creek plum
creekside
creekward
creekwards
creekwater
creeky
Cripple Creek
Crooked Creek
Cross Creek
Dawson Creek
Dead Nigger Creek
Deer Creek
dry creek
God willing and the creek don't rise
Haw Creek
Honey Creek
Kings Creek
Laguña Creek
Licking Creek
Lord willing and the creek don't rise
Lost Creek
Maple Creek
Martins Creek
Mill Creek
Miry Creek
Mole Creek
Oak Creek
Old Mill Creek
Otter Creek
Paint Creek
Panther Creek
Pincher Creek
Pipe Creek
Plunketts Creek
Prairie Creek
Pryor Creek
Rock Creek
run like a dry creek
Salt Creek
Silver Creek
Soochow Creek
subcreek
Suzhou Creek
Swan Creek
Tennant Creek
Turkey Creek
up a creek
up a creek without a paddle
upcreek
up poo creek
up shit creek
up shit creek without a paddle
up shit's creek
up shit's creek without a paddle
up the creek
up the creek without a paddle
Vance Creek
Wascana Creek
Werris Creek
Whiska Creek
Wilson Creek
Wise Creek
Wood Creek
Woody Creek