Definition of "lake"

lake¹

/leɪk/

noun
plural lakes
1. A large, landlocked stretch of water or similar liquid.
  Quotations
  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.
2. A large amount of liquid; as, a wine lake.
  Quotations
  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
3. (now chiefly dialectal) A small stream of running water; a channel for water; a drain.
4. (obsolete) A pit, or ditch.

lake²

/leɪk/

noun
plural lakes
1. (obsolete) An offering, sacrifice, gift.
2. (dialectal) Play; sport; game; fun; glee.
verb
third-person singular simple present 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.

lake³

/leɪk/

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

lake⁴

/leɪk/

noun
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.
  Quotations
  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, part One: Latitudes and Departures, page 242
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.
verb
third-person singular simple present lakes, present participle laking, simple past and past participle laked
1. To make lake-red.