Word.ws English Dictionary

lake

/leɪk/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/læɪk/

lake noun: a large, landlocked stretch of water or similar liquid.

lake: a large, landlocked stretch of water or similar liquid
Image: Myrabella, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

lake (plural lakes)

  1. A large, landlocked stretch of water or similar liquid.
    • 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.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
    • 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 ].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
  2. A large amount of liquid.
    • a lake of wine
    • So you punched out a window for ventilation. Was that before or after you noticed you were standing in a lake of gasoline?1991, Robert DeNiro (actor), Backdraft
    Synonyms:
    mountain
  3. (dialectal) A small stream of running water; a channel for water; a drain.
  4. (obsolete) A pit, or ditch.

Noun (2)

lake (plural lakes)

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

Verb (1)

lake (third-person singular simple present lakes, present participle laking, simple past and past participle laked)

  1. (obsolete) To present an offering.
  2. (Northern, UK, dialectal) To leap, jump, exert oneself; to play.
    • The agent was of course the Boggart, and it soon became their sport (which they called laking with Boggart) to put the shoe-horn into the hole and have it shot back at them.1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 307
  3. To subject biological cells to repeated cycles of freezing and thawing until lysis.

Noun (3)

lake (plural lakes)

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

Noun (4)

lake (countable and uncountable, 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.
    • 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.1954 August, Basil M. Bazley, “Three Scottish Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 534
    • 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.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
    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.

Verb (2)

lake (third-person singular simple present lakes, present participle laking, simple past and past participle laked)

  1. To make lake-red.

Proper noun capitalized: Lake

Lake (countable and uncountable, plural Lakes)

  1. A surname.
  2. A unisex given name.
    • Lake Bell, Lake Chambers Speed
  3. A large village and civil parish on the Isle of Wight (OS grid ref SZ5983).
  4. A settlement in Wilsford cum Lake parish, Wiltshire (OS grid ref SU1339).
  5. An unincorporated community in Fremont County, Idaho.
  6. An unincorporated community in Laurel County, Kentucky.
  7. An unincorporated community in Ascension Parish, Louisiana.
  8. An unincorporated community in Baltimore County, Maryland.
  9. An unincorporated community in Garfield Township, Clare County, Michigan.
  10. A town in Newton County and Scott County, Mississippi.
  11. An unincorporated community in Tulsa County, Oklahoma.
  12. An unincorporated community in Northumberland County, Virginia.
Show 5 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
  1. An unincorporated community in Logan County, West Virginia.
  2. A town in Marinette County, Wisconsin.
  3. A former town in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, annexed by the city of Milwaukee in 1954.
  4. A town in Price County, Wisconsin.
  5. A number of townships, listed under Lake Township.

lake meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

lake in Hindi

body of water
झील jhīl, सरोवर sarovar

lake in Tamil

body of water
ஏரி ēri, இலங்கு ilaṅku

lake in Marathi

body of water
सरोवर sarovar, तलाव talāv, तळ taḷ

lake in Urdu

body of water
دَرِیاچَہ dariyāca, جِھیل jhīl
More languagesFewer languages
lake in Bengali
হ্রদ hrod
lake in Telugu
సరస్సు sarassu
lake in Malayalam
തടാകം taṭākaṁ, കായല് kāyalŭ, പൊയ്ക poyka, സരസ്സ് sarassŭ
lake in Kannada
ಸರೋವರ sarōvara, ಜಲಾಶಯ jalāśaya, ಪುಷ್ಕರಿಣಿ puṣkariṇi, ದೊಡ್ಡ ಕೆರೆ doḍḍa kere
lake in Punjabi
ਝੀਲ jhīl
lake in Gujarati
સરોવર sarovar
lake in Odia
ହ୍ରଦ hrada
lake in Sanskrit
सरोवर sarovara, सलिलभर salilabhara, सरस् saras, ह्रद hrada
lake in Sinhala
වැව wæwa
lake in Assamese
বিল bil, হ্ৰদ hrod
lake in Nepali
ताल tāl
lake in Pashto
ونګره wann-garah
lake in Tagalog
lawa
lake in Arabic
بُحَيْرَة buḥayra, بحيرة buḥēra, beḥēra, بُحيرَة buḥēra, ضاية ḍāya
lake in Malay
tasik, danau, alongan, situ
lake in Indonesian
danau, telaga
lake in Persian
دَرْیاچِه daryâče, دَرْیاژِه daryâže, دَرْیااَک daryâ-âk
lake in Thai
สาบ sàap, ทะเลสาบ tá-lee-sàap, ครั่ง khràng
lake in Vietnamese
hồ
lake in Myanmar
ကန် kan, အင်း ang:
Sindhi
ڍَنڍَ ḍhanḍha
Dhivehi
ކުޅި kuḷi, ފެންގަނޑު fen̊gaⁿḍu

Examples of lake in a sentence

  • Lake Baikal is the world's largest freshwater lake in terms of volume.
  • The waters of the lake were transparent until the factory dumped waste there.
  • The wave traveled from the center of the lake before breaking on the shore.

All 40 example sentences with lake

Synonyms of lake

Forms of lake

Noun
plurallakes
alternative formlaik
Verb
third-person singular presentlakes
present participlelaking
past participlelaked
pastlaked
Proper noun
pluralLakes

Plural of lake: lakes

Origin of lake

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”).

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.

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.

Words formed from lake

Phrases with lake

159 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with lake

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about lake

What does lake mean?
Lake means a large, landlocked stretch of water or similar liquid.
What is lake in Hindi?
Lake in Hindi is झील (jhīl), सरोवर (sarovar). See Lake meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is lake?
Lake can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce lake?
Lake is pronounced /leɪk/ (UK).
What is the plural of lake?
The plural of lake is lakes.

Words near lake in the dictionary

  1. Lakatos
  2. Lakatoses
  3. Lakatosian
  4. Lakawan
  5. lakawood
  6. lake
  7. Lake Agassiz
  8. Lake Albert
  9. Lake Almanor Country Club
  10. Lake Almanor Peninsula
  11. Lake Almanor West

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lake (page history and authors); Lake (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-lake.ogg, en-us-lake.ogg.

Cite this entry: “lake.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lake. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.