lake
Meanings
- A large, landlocked stretch of water or similar liquid.
- A large amount of liquid.
- A small stream of running water; a channel for water; a drain.
- A pit, or ditch.
- An offering, sacrifice, gift.
- Play; sport; game; fun; glee.
- To present an offering.
- To leap, jump, exert oneself, play.
- To subject biological cells to repeated cycles of freezing and thawing until lysis.
- A kind of fine, white linen.
- 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.
- 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.
- To make lake-red.
- A surname.
- A unisex given name.
- A placename:
- A place in England:
- A large village and civil parish on the Isle of Wight (OS grid ref SZ5983).
- A settlement in Wilsford cum Lake parish, Wiltshire (OS grid ref SU1339).
- A number of places in the United States:
- An unincorporated community in Fremont County, Idaho.
- An unincorporated community in Laurel County, Kentucky.
- An unincorporated community in Ascension Parish, Louisiana.
- An unincorporated community in Baltimore County, Maryland.
- An unincorporated community in Garfield Township, Clare County, Michigan.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Arose from a conflation of * Middle English lake (“small stream of running water, pool, lake”), from Old English lacu (“stream, pool, pond, lake”), from Proto-West Germanic *laku, from Proto-Germanic *lakō (“stream, pool, body of water", originally "a place where water runs off and collects”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *leg- (“to leak, drain”); with * Middle English lac (“lake”), from Old French lac (“lake, ditch, pit”), a borrowed term, likely from Latin lacus (“lake, tub, vat”) (see Old French lac for more). The first element is related to Dutch laak (“stream, drainage ditch, pond”), German Low German Lake, Laak (“drainage, marshland”), German Lache (“puddle, pool”), Norwegian løk (“a deep, slow-moving stream; a widening in a stream or river”), Faroese løkur (“small brook”) and lækja (“water hole, well, watershoot in a brook”), 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”).