Talk:lake

"Fugitive" is an adjective for "crimson"? Can someone please elaborate. A google search of the web for "fugitive crimson" turned up no supporting evidence. If "fugitive" does modify "crimson", then this meaning should be added to the entry for "fugitive". Thanks. - Joseph D. Rudmin r-u-d-m-i-n-j-d (AT) j-m-u (DOT) e-d-u

"fugitive" here must mean "fleeting" or "ephemeral". SemperBlotto 19:03, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Etymology

It seems silly to say that this isn't related to Latin lacus. Proto languages are purely hypothetical, you can't make any certain statements about proto languages by definition. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:52, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

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lake

Rfd-sense: (In the plural) an area characterised by its many lakes; e.g., the English Lake District is often shortened to The Lakes.. Tagged but not listed. -- Liliana • 11:23, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

It seems silly to make a noun sense in order to explain a proper noun (note the capitalization). Chuck Entz (talk) 03:48, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I deleted the sense, added Lakes and Lake District to derived terms and made a see also -link to "Lakes" on top of the page. --Hekaheka (talk) 07:24, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Delete. The Lake District is shortened to the Lakes (note plural!) because it has more than one lake. This does not support singular lake meaning "area full of lakes". Equinox ◑ 20:43, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Arabic translation

is excessively vocalised; بٌحيرة is enough, the other vowels being automaticly driven by the following consonant (so is it written in many arabic dictionaries); the last vowal is grammatical, and so is not a part of the frame of the word. Especially seeing that, elsewhere in the wictionary, arabic tranlation arer NOT AT ALL vocalised.

(This point should be discussed elsewhere. Where ?)

--Lucyin (talk) 10:36, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Missing verb: to cover in liquid, or similar?

e.g. "The whole heparinized blood was laked in distilled water." "Braised pork with chestnuts — a favorite of Chairman Mao, who was born in the province — is studded with red chiles and laked with chile oil." Equinox ◑ 02:30, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Quora mentions an old verb "to (cause to) undergo separation of hemoglobin from erythrocytes". Something along those lines is consistent with other citations at google books:"laked in" and google books:"laked with". I've no idea what the etymology is. Other dictionaries which have that verb also mention an old medical noun, "a collection of fluid", and imply that both derive from "lacu, from lacus", but lacu doesn't derive from lacus, so...

Given the reference to red chiles, the cooking citation might be a (figurative?) use of the "make lake-red" sense we have, or a figurative use of a currently-missing verb "to lacquer".

I can also find a 2015 citation from John Muir, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, using a poetic sense like "provided with lakes": "these bright snowy mountains were clouded in smoke and rivered and laked with living fire."

- -sche (discuss) 03:39, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

German noun "Lake" /laːkə/ describes a mixture of water and salt (brine) used to infuse meat before the drying/smoking process¹ and similar food processing (near synonym to marinade). A semantic connection to liquid as introduced by the roots here is prominent in that term. This at least covers the meaning of Chairman Mao's favourite and would support having the requested additional meaning. No proof, but an indication at least. --Chrkl (talk) 16:05, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Addendum: ¹brining the meat before smoking makes it keep its red colour. I am unfamiliar with the "lake-red" and its roots, but maybe it's the other way around: Lake red being derived of the food-processing? My wild guess, though. --Chrkl (talk)

English, etymologies 2 & 5

Shouldn't they be merged? 176.221.123.19 22:13, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

I've removed ety 5 altogether, as it was redundant to ety 2. I added it by mistake. Equinox ◑ 22:43, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Etymology, one more time

Are there any serious sources for the assertion that lac has played absolutely no part in the genesis of the word? Actually, the most comprehensive treatment among online dictionaries only mentions the OE word as an influence, and some of its more distinguished competition, in their less elaborate treatments, don't find it worth mentioning at all. The references section here doesn't make it clear who asserts what about what. 195.187.108.60 00:11, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

RFD discussion: August–October 2021

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lake

‘Scientific’ sense added by an IP. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 22:30, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

It could be that an ephemeral lake is intended here. DonnanZ (talk) 09:29, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Delete: I don’t think a temporary occurrence or use of something warrants a separate definition. A temporary road is still a road. A temporary exhibit at a museum is still an exhibit. A temporary lake is still a body of water while it exists. — SGconlaw (talk) 19:15, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

It appears to be something to do with this:

"Geologically defined, lakes are temporary bodies of water" [1]

"In terms of geological time spans, lakes are temporary bodies of water." [2]

Mihia (talk) 17:38, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Cool, then they're still talking about lakes. Same sense, different way of thinking about it. DAVilla 11:59, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

• RFD-deleted. Not really a separate sense, just a separate perspective. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:16, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

More than Water

Here: diff I introduced "or similar liquid" to the basic definition of a lake. I think it's a little questionable (and hence likely to be removed at some point) given that 99% of lakes are water lakes in the human experience. Ultimately though, I think this is definitely justifiable. I don't know of any examples off hand, but I strongly suspect that fantasy and science fiction literature will discuss bona fide lakes make up of non-water liquids. Further, Kraken Mare on Titan a moon of Saturn is a lake slightly larger than the Caspian Sea made up of non-water liquid. This may ultimately make a sort of narrow sense and broad sense, but I think that the concept of 'lake' extends beyond water in the eyes of both scientists, in their recent discoveries, and fiction writers, without regard of actual reality. And what's more, I think that an English speaker that stood on the shore of a lake of hydrocarbons would think of it as a lake, though it not be made up of water. Now, I said "similar" in "or similar liquid" because I think there is a threshold at which the English speaker will see a large liquid expanse which will not be a lake, for instance a large body of a liquid with properties significantly different from water- perhaps its flow pattern is too bizarre. I don't know what form that would take exactly. But it does seem like the English language experience of liquid water is a baseline for the conceptual idea of the lake, hence I don't totally remove 'water' from the definition of lake and replace it with 'liquid'; this would be just too far from the real usage of the word. And to ignore non-water lakes as too fringe is actually a mistake too- people join the concept of lake with other liquids, even lava sometimes. These melt into the second sense ('a large amount of liquid'), but I think there are actual lakes of stuff on Titan and in the imagination which are squarely within the concept of a bona fide lake and are not merely 'a large amount of liquid'. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:26, 22 August 2022 (UTC) (modified)

English – Etymology 1

"Despite their similarity in form and meaning, … not related …"

This paragraph does not at all clarify the distinction introduced through supposedly different proto-language roots (*leg- vs. *lókus). On the contrary the examples in both lists seem a totally arbitrary choice.

Confusingly, it even states that Latin lacus is unrelated to Latin lacus, while still linking both instances to the very same paragraph and article which in turn re-joins the only differences in meaning claimed here (basin/tank vs. pool) back up via "Cognate with Ancient Greek λάκκος (lákkos, 'cistern, tank, pit') and Old English lagu ('sea, ocean, flood')". From what I gather furthermore in lay#Etymology_2 linked there, it makes sense to assert that both distinct roots mentioned here are in truth cognates themselves:

Stems *leg- for behaviour of water and *lagu- for instances of (bodies of) water being accidentally similar, semantically close and supposedly still unrelated is a bit too much of a "phonic" conincidence for a reconstructed language and its inherent fuzzy quality, in my opinion.

To sum it up the division as presented (and linked up) here seems entirely nonsensical and random. Unless someone can do better and more clearly discriminate between the two roots further down the history line by showing (i.e. proving) that the "leaking" root and the "pool" root are truly unrelated, this paragraph needs thorough revision and a much weaker distinction of roots (if justified at all). --Chrkl (talk) 15:48, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

The etymology section never says that Latin lacus is unrelated to lacus. It says that lake has been "contaminated by" (a poor choice of words, I'd prefer "conflated with") the French word, which comes from the Latin word, but otherwise is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *laku, which is unrelated to lacus. Thanks to Grimm's law, *laku (“stream, pool, lake”) cannot come from Proto-Indo-European *lókus, although Proto-Germanic *laguz and Proto-Germanic *lahō can. Nothing in the etymology section is nonsensical or random; the only thing I would change is the unfortunate use of "contaminated". —Mahāgaja · talk 16:20, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Well, thank you! Grimm's Law is something I can relate to, as is the term conflation. I must admit I did not realise what was meant by contamination, and failing to understand the introductory part I also failed to grasp the full meaning to the argument presented. As this is the proof I was asking for as well as a clarification of the entire paragraph … shouldn't it (Grimm's law as well as the correction towards conflation) be mentioned in the article to support the statement? :-) --Chrkl (talk) 17:05, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

The etymology was initially written so that Latin lacus was not included. Later edits have introduced it, but no modification to the "Despite their similarity in form and meaning, … not related …" part was overlooked or neglected. Leasnam (talk) 02:35, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Ok, I've adjusted that part so that it makes better sense. Leasnam (talk) 02:39, 15 October 2022 (UTC)