creek
Forms
- Plural
- creeks
Definitions
1.A small inlet, often saltwater, leading to the sea or to the main channel of a river, especially a river estuary.
- There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which, taken any way you please, is bad, / And strands them in forsaken guts and creeks / No decent soul would think of visiting.
2.The inner part of a port that is used as a dock for small boats.
3.A stream of water, typically a stream of freshwater smaller than a river; in Australia, also used of river-sized bodies of water.
- We all feel it Looming, even when we're awake, out there ahead someplace, the way you come to feel a River or Creek ahead, before anything else, sound, sky, vegetation, may have announced it.
4.Any turn or winding.
1.Of or pertaining to the Creek tribe.
- The chieftain was well versed in Creek history.
Frequency
Overall
Uncommon· #3025
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Rare
- General reading & writing
- Uncommon
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Rare
Etymology
From Middle English crike, probably from Old Norse kriki, from Proto-Germanic *krikjô, variant of krekô, from Proto-Indo-European *ger- (“to turn, to wind”); the modern form creek (already late Middle English creke) either reflects open-syllable lengthening of Middle English /i/ or reborrowing from Middle Dutch krēke., Compare typologically English bight, akin to bend, bow.