• (British, America) enPR: lāk, IPA: /leɪk/

Arose from a conflation of the form of inherited Middle English lake with Middle English lac (“lake”), from Old French lac (“lake”) or Latin lacus (“lake, basin, tank”), see lac.

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”).

lake (plural lakes)

1. 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.

2. A large amount of liquid; as, a wine lake.
   • 1991, Robert DeNiro (actor), Backdraft (film):

     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.

• See Thesaurus:lake

• lacustrine

see lake/translations

From enm-nor lake, lak, lac (also laik, layke; Southern loke), from Old English lāc, from Proto-West Germanic *laik, from Proto-Germanic *laikaz, from Proto-Indo-European *leyg-.

Verb form partly from Middle English laken, from Old English lacan, from Proto-Germanic *laikaną, from Proto-Indo-European *leyg-.

lake (plural lakes)

1. (obsolete) An offering, sacrifice, gift.
2. (dialectal) Play; sport; game; fun; glee.

• bridelock
• wedlock

lake (lakes, present participle laking; simple past and past participle laked)

1. (obsolete) To present an offering.
2. (dialectal, Northern, UK) To leap, jump, exert oneself, play.
3. Subject biological cells to repeated cycles of freezing and thawing until lysis.

From Middle English lake, from Old English *lacen or Middle Dutch laken; both from Proto-Germanic *lakaną.

lake (plural lakes)

1. (obsolete) A kind of fine, white linen.

From French laque, from Persian لاک, from Hindi , from Sanskrit लाक्षा.

lake (plural lakes)

1. 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.
   • 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.

   Synonyms: lac

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.

   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.

• French: laque
• German: Färberlack
• Italian: lacca
• Portuguese: laca
• Russian: лак
• Spanish: laca

lake (lakes, present participle laking; simple past and past participle laked)

1. To make lake-red.

Derived from the noun lake.

1. Surname.
2. A unisex given name.

   Lake Bell, Lake Speed

3. A placename:
   1. A place in England:
      1. A large village/and/civil parish on the Isle of Wight (OS grid ref SZ5983).
      2. A settlement in Wilsford cum Lake, Wiltshire (OS grid ref SU1339).
   2. A number of places in USA:
      1. An unincorporated community in Fremont County, Idaho.
      2. An unincorporated community in Laurel County, Kentucky.
      3. An unincorporated community in Ascension Parish, Louisiana.
      4. An unincorporated community in Baltimore County, Maryland.
      5. An unincorporated community in Garfield, Clare County.
      6. A town in Newton County, and.
      7. An unincorporated community in Tulsa County, Oklahoma.
      8. An unincorporated community in Northumberland County, Virginia.
      9. An unincorporated community in Logan County, West Virginia.
      10. A town in Marinette County, Wisconsin.
      11. A former town in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, annexed by the city of Milwaukee in 1954.
      12. A town in Price County, Wisconsin.
      13. A number of townships, listed under Lake Township.