Lake

A lake is a body of relatively still water of considerable size, localized in a basin, that is surrounded by land apart from a river, stream, or other form of moving water that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes are inland and not part of the ocean and therefore are distinct from lagoons, and are larger and deeper than ponds. Lakes can be contrasted with rivers or streams, which are usually flowing. However most lakes are fed and drained by rivers and streams.

Natural lakes are generally found in mountainous areas, rift zones, and areas with ongoing glaciation. Other lakes are found in endorheic basins or along the courses of mature rivers. In some parts of the world there are many lakes because of chaotic drainage patterns left over from the last Ice Age. All lakes are temporary over geologic time scales, as they will slowly fill in with sediments or spill out of the basin containing them.

Many lakes are artificial and are constructed for industrial or agricultural use, for hydro-electric power generation or domestic water supply, or for aesthetic or recreational purposes.

Read more about Lake:  Etymology, Meaning, and Usage of "lake", Distribution of Lakes, Origin of Natural Lakes, Types of Lakes, Characteristics, Limnology, How Lakes Disappear, Extraterrestrial Lakes, Notable Lakes, See Also

Famous quotes containing the word lake:

    Wordsworth went to the Lakes, but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there.
    Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

    What a wilderness walk for a man to take alone! None of your half-mile swamps, none of your mile-wide woods merely, as on the skirts of our towns, without hotels, only a dark mountain or a lake for guide-board and station, over ground much of it impassable in summer!
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    His education lay like a film of white oil on the black lake of his barbarian consciousness. For this reason, the things he said were hardly interesting at all. Only what he was.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)