lac

• IPA^(key): /læk/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -æk

From Portuguese laca, from Hindi लाख (lākh)/Urdu لاکھ (lākh) or cognates in other Indo-Aryan languages, from Sanskrit लाक्षा (lākṣā).

lac (countable and uncountable, plural lacs)

1. A resinous substance or lacquer produced mainly on the banyan tree by the female of Kerria lacca, a scale insect.

lac (plural lacs)

1. Dated spelling of lakh.
   • 1804, R[obert] Montgomery Martin, quoting Yashwantrao Holkar, “Section II. European Intercourse—Rise and Growth of British Power.”, in The Indian Empire: […], volume I (History, Topography, Population, Government, Finance, Commerce, and Staple Products), London; New York, N.Y.: The London Printing and Publishing Company, published [1858], →OCLC, page 399, column 2:

     […] Lake [i.e., Gerard Lake, 1st Viscount Lake] should not have leisure to breathe for a moment, and calamities would fall on lacs of human beings in continued war by the attacks of his army, which would overwhelm like the waves of the sea.

   • 1878 August, “Contemporary Portraits. New Series.—No. 8. Charles Darwin, F.R.S.”, in The University Magazine: A Literary and Philosophic Review, volume II, London: Hurst & Blackett, […], →OCLC, page 154:

     The Laccadives and Maldives, for instance, meaning literally the "lac of islands" and the "thousand islands," are a series of such atolls; […]

From Cadillac.

lac (plural lacs)

1. (slang) Clipping of Cadillac.

   Synonyms: caddie, caddy

   Last night I was driving around in my lac.

   • 1992, Big Mello, Bone Hard Zaggin, Rap-A-Lot Records, track 5. "Mac's Drive 'Lac's"

     Macs drive lacs.

   • 2005, “Drive Slow”, in Late Registration, performed by Kanye West:

     The candy gloss is immaculate, it's simply amazing / Them elbows poking wide on that candy ’Lac

From laceration.

IPA^(key): /læs/

• Rhymes: -æs

lac (countable and uncountable, plural lacs)

1. (medicine, colloquial) Laceration.

   hand lac

• ACL, CLA, Cal, Cal., LCA, alc, cal, cal.

From Latin lacus (“lake”), from Proto-Italic *lakus, from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”).

lac

1. lake

From Latin lacus (“lake”), from Proto-Italic *lakus, from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”).

lac m

1. lake

Inherited from Middle French lac, from Old French lac, a replacement of earlier lai (“pit, trench, ditch, grave, mere, pond”) (see Old French lac). Generally inferred as a borrowing of Latin lacus (“lake”), from Proto-Italic *lakus, from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”).

• IPA^(key): /lak/

• Audio (France, Paris)

  (file)

• Audio (Paris)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ak
• Homophones: lacs, laque, laquent, laques

lac m (plural lacs)

1. lake

• “lac”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• ACL

lac

1. (Classical K'iche') plate

• lact, lacte

From lact by simplification of a word-final sequence of two plosives (the variant nominative/accusative form lacte shows the addition of a vowel as an alternative). The etymology is controversial: there is no consensus on the cognate set, the manner of descent (inheritance vs. borrowing), or the form and ultimate orgin of the etymon. Possible cognates include Ancient Greek γάλα, γᾰ́λᾰκτ-/γᾰ́λᾰκ- (gála, gálakt-/gálak-, “milk”), Old Armenian կաթն (katʻn, “milk”) (or perhaps only its variant form Old Armenian *կաղց (*kałcʻ), reconstructed as the ancestor of modern dialectal Armenian կախց (kaxcʻ))[1] Hittite 𒂵𒆷𒀝𒋻 (galaktar, “balm, resin”), Albanian dhallë (“buttermilk”), Romanian zară (“buttermilk”) and Waigali zōr (“milk”).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /lak/, [ɫ̪äk]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /lak/, [läk]

lac n sg (genitive lactis); third declension

1. milk

   Cum lacte nutricis. ― With the nurse's milk.

2. for something sweet, pleasant

   In melle sunt linguae sitae vostrae atque orationes, lacteque; corda felle sunt lita, atque acerbo aceto.

   In honey your tongues and speeches are dipped, and in milk; your hearts are smeared with gall and with bitter vinegar. (Plautus)

   Ut mentes ... satiari velut quodam jucundioris disciplinae lacte patiantur.

   That minds may endure being satisfied as by the milk of a more pleasant discipline. (Quintilian)

3. milky juice

   Lac herbae. ― Milk of a plant.

   cum lacte veneni. ― with poisonous milk.

   • c. 1st century BCE, Anonymous (formerly misattributed to Ovid), Nux

     Lamina mollis adhuc tenero dum lacte, quod intro est,
     nec mala sunt ulli nostra futura bono.

     As their nutshell still remains soft with something tenderly milky inside,
     my future fruits are not good to anyone.

4. (poetic) milk-white color
   • 2 CE, Publius Ovidius Naso, Ars Amatoria I.290:

     Forte sub umbrosis nemorosae vallibus Idae
     candidus, armenti gloria, taurus erat,
     signatus tenui media inter cornua nigro;
     una fuit labes, cetera lactis erant.

     As fortune had it, in the shadowy valleys of forested Ida,
     there was a white bull, the glory of its herd,
     marked by slightly black colour between its horns;
     the blemish was (only) one, the rest were milk-white.

Third-declension noun (neuter, imparisyllabic non-i-stem), singular only.

• ā lacte cūnīsque (“from the cradle, from infancy”)
• lac pressum (“cheese”)
• tam similem, quam lactis (“as like as one egg is to another”)
• qui plus lactis quam sanguinis habet (“of tender age”)

• Late Latin: lactis (see there for further descendants)
• →⇒ English: lactic, lact(o)-
• → Esperanto: lakto
  • Ido: lakto
• → Interlingua: lacte
• → Interlingue: lacte

• “lac”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “lac”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• lac in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎, London: Macmillan and Co.
  • (ambiguous) to imbibe error from one's mother's breasts: errorem cum lacte nutricis sugere (Tusc. 3. 1. 2)
    

From Old French lac, from Latin lacus (“lake”), from Proto-Italic *lakus, from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”).

lac m (plural lacs)

1. (Jersey, geography) lake

• læc

From Proto-West Germanic *laik, from Proto-Germanic *laikaz, compare *laikaną. Cognates include Old Norse leikr (whence Danish leg (“game”), Swedish leka (“to play”)), Gothic 𐌻𐌰𐌹𐌺𐍃 (laiks, “dance”).

• IPA^(key): /lɑːk/

lāc n or f

1. play, sport
2. battle, strife
3. gift, offering, sacrifice, booty; message

   Hie drihtne lac begen brohton.

   They both brought an offering to the Lord.

when neuter

when feminine

• heaþolāc (“warfare”)
• wiflāc (“intercourse with a woman”)
• scīnlāc (“illusion, imagination, magical delusion”)

• -lāc
• lācan
• lǣċan

• Middle English: lok, loke, loc, loac, lock, lake, lac
  • English: lake (dialectal)

• lai (early)

Generally assumed to be a borrowing of Latin lacus (“basin, tank, tub, reservoir, pond”), displacing the native Old French lai (“pit, grave, trench, mere, pond”), inherited from the same Latin term, by the early 13th century. Latin lacus derives from Proto-Italic *lakus, from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”),

The displacement of Old French lai may have been assisted by influence from early Middle English lac, lace (“lake, pond, pool", also "pit, ditch, trench”), from Old English lacu (“pool, pond, lake”), due to lac's sudden spread in Old French following the annexation of English controlled Normandy into the kingdom of France in 1204. An outright borrowing of the term from Middle English rather than from the Latin is also not outside the realm of possibility, as the earliest attestations of Old French lac are in the Eadwine Psalter (written by Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman scribes in England) and Erec and Enide (an Arthurian romance, whose author was heavily influenced by English, Anglo-Norman, and Celtic writings).

The Old Occitan lac, laz, latz (“snare, noose", also "pit, hole”), which some theorise as leading to the Old French form (with c), is actually derived from a different Latin root related to Old French laz (“snare, noose, lace”), and possibly conflated with Old High German lacha (“ditch, trench, pool”). See Italian lacca (“hole, pit”).

lac oblique singular, m (oblique plural las, nominative singular las, nominative plural lac)

1. lake

• Middle French: lac
  • → Middle English: lac
  • French: lac
  • Norman: lac (Jersey)

From Proto-Celtic *laggos, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)leh₁g-.

• IPA^(key): /l͈aɡ/

lac

1. weak, feeble
2. (hair) soft, smooth

• lacaid
• lacatus

• Irish: lag
• Manx: lag
• Scottish Gaelic: lag

• G. Toner, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, S. Arbuthnot, D. Wodtko, M.-L. Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “lac”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language

Inherited from Latin lacus (“lake”), from Proto-Italic *lakus, from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”). Compare Aragonese laco, Catalan llac, Esperanto lago, French lac, Italian lago, Maltese lag, Portuguese lago, Sardinian lagu, Spanish lago.

lac n (plural lacuri)

1. lake

• lăcos

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

lac m

1. paint

• vernisch (Rumantsch Grischun, Sursilvan, Puter, Vallader), verneisch (Surmiran)

• laj[1]
• laz

Compare Middle Armenian լաճ (lač).

• (Northern Zazaki) IPA^(key): [ˈlɑdz]
• (Southern Zazaki) IPA^(key): [ˈlɑdʒ]
• Hyphenation: lac

lac m

1. son[2]

   O lacê mıno. ― He is my son.

   Lacê to lacê mı rê vano. ― Your son says to my son.

2. boy

   Çı lacê do rındo. ― What a beautiful boy.