milk
Meanings
- A white liquid produced by the mammary glands of female mammals to nourish their young. From certain animals, especially cows, it is also called dairy milk and is a common food for humans as a beverage or used to produce various dairy products such as butter, cheese, and yogurt.
- A white (or whitish) liquid obtained from a vegetable source such as almonds, coconuts, oats, rice, or soy beans.
- An individual serving of milk.
- An individual portion of milk, such as found in a creamer, for tea and coffee.
- The ripe, undischarged spat of an oyster.
- Semen.
- To express milk from (a mammal, especially a cow).
- To draw (milk) from the breasts or udder.
- To secrete (milk) from the breasts or udder.
- To express a liquid from a creature.
- To make excessive use of (a particular point in speech or writing, a source of funds, etc.); to exploit; to take advantage of (something).
- To give off small gas bubbles during the final part of the charging operation.
- To masturbate a male to ejaculation, especially for the amusement or satisfaction of the masturbator rather than the person masturbated.
- A surname.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle English milk, mylk, melk, mulc, from Old English meolc, meoluc (“milk”), from Proto-West Germanic *meluk (“milk”), from Proto-Germanic *meluks (“milk”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂melǵ- (“milk, to milk”). Cognates Cognate with West Frisian molke (“milk”), Dutch melk (“milk”), Dutch Low Saxon melk (“milk”), German Milch (“milk”), German Low German Melk (“milk”), Yiddish מילך (milkh, “milk”), Danish mælk (“milk”), Faroese and Icelandic mjólk (“milk”), Norn *mjølk (“milk”), Norwegian Bokmål melk, mjølk (“milk”), Norwegian Nynorsk mjølk (“milk”), Swedish mjölk (“milk”), Gothic 𐌼𐌹𐌻𐌿𐌺𐍃 (miluks, “milk”), Greek αμέλγω (amélgo, “to milk”), Albanian mjel (“to milk”), Latvian malks, Lithuanian malkas, Belarusian малако́ (malakó, “milk”), Bulgarian мля́ко (mljáko, “milk”), Czech mléko, Macedonian мле́ко (mléko, “milk”), Polish mleko (“milk”), Russian and Ukrainian молоко́ (molokó, “milk”), Serbo-Croatian mlijéko (“milk”), Slovak mlieko (“milk”), Slovene mlẹ́ko (“milk”), Welsh blith, Tocharian A malke.