lac

See also: Appendix:Variations of "lac"

Translingual

Etymology

Clipping of English Lacandon.

Symbol

lac

1. (international standards) ISO 639-3 language code for Lacandon.

See also

• Wiktionary’s coverage of Lacandon terms

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /læk/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -æk

Etymology 1

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

Noun

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.
   • 2019 November 5, Alice Bell, “Can science break its plastic addiction?”, in CNN‎^[3]:

     At the turn of the century, the ever-expanding electrical industry was running low on shellac, a resin secreted by the female lac bug which could be used as an insulating material.

Derived terms

• Ceylon lac
• gum lac
• laccol
• lac dye
• laciferous
• lac insect
• lac lake
• lac scale
• lac tree
• lacwork
• Mexican lac
• seedlac
• shellac
• sticklac

Translations

a resinous substance

• Arabic: لُكّ m (lukk), لَكّ m (lakk)
• Assamese: লা (la)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: ^{(please verify)} 桼 (zh) (qī)

• Finnish: lakka (fi)
• French: laque (fr) f
• German: Lack (de) m
• Greek: λάκη f (láki)
• Hebrew: לַכָּה (he) f (láka)
• Hungarian: lakk (hu)
• Italian: lacca (it) f
• Japanese: ラッカー (ja) (rakkā)
• Kannada: ಅರಗು (kn) (aragu)
• Korean: 래커 (raekeo)
• Persian: لاک (fa) (lâk)
• Polish: lakier (pl) m
• Portuguese: laca (pt) f
• Russian: лак (ru) m (lak)
• Sanskrit: लाक्षा (sa) n (lākṣā)
• Spanish: laca (es) f
• Telugu: లక్క (te) (lakka)
• Thai: ครั่ง (th) (khrâng)

Etymology 2

Noun

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; […]

Etymology 3

From Cadillac.

Noun

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

Etymology 4

From laceration.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /læs/
• Rhymes: -æs

Noun

lac (countable and uncountable, plural lacs)

1. (medicine, colloquial) Laceration.

   hand lac

Anagrams

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

Aromanian

Etymology

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

Noun

lac

1. lake

Dalmatian

Etymology

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

Noun

lac m

1. lake

Franco-Provençal

Alternative forms

• lac (Bressan)

Noun

lac (ORB, broad)

1. alternative form of lèc (“lake”)

References

• lac in DicoFranPro: Dictionnaire Français/Francoprovençal – on dicofranpro.llm.umontreal.ca

French

Etymology

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *lókus

Proto-Italic *lakus

Latin lacuslbor.?

Old French lac

Middle French lac

French lac

Inherited from Middle French lac, from Old French lac, which displaced earlier lai (“pit, trench, ditch, grave, mere, pond”, see in lac). Generally inferred as a borrowing of Latin lacus (“lake”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /lak/

• Audio (France (Grenoble)):

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• Audio (France (Hérault)):

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• Audio (France (Lyon)):

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• Audio (France (Massy)):

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• Audio (France):

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• Audio (Paris, France):

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• Audio (Paris, France):

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• Audio (France (Paris)):

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• Audio (France (Toulouse)):

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• Audio (France (Vosges)):

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• Audio (France (Vosges)):

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• Audio (France (Vosges)):

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• Audio (Switzerland (Valais)):

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

Noun

lac m (plural lacs)

1. lake

Derived terms

• Grands Lacs
• il n'y a pas le feu au lac
• lac Léman
• lac Poyang
• lac salé

Descendants

• Guianese Creole: lak

Further reading

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

Anagrams

• ACL

K'iche'

Noun

lac

1. (Classical K'iche') plate

Latin

Poculum lactis.

Alternative forms

• lact, lacte, lactis

Etymology

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 origin of the etymon.

Possible cognates include Ancient Greek γάλα (gála, “milk”, stem γᾰ́λᾰκτ- (gắlăkt-)), Old Armenian կաթն (katʻn, “milk”) and its likely variant *կաղց (*kałcʻ), Hittite 𒂵𒆷𒀝𒋻 (galaktar, “balm, resin”), Albanian dhallë (“buttermilk”), Romanian zară (“buttermilk”) and Waigali zōr (“milk”).

More information

Pokorny reconstructs the Latin and Greek words as inherited from Proto-Indo-European *glakt n from a root *glag- or *glak-. De Vaan derives the Latin, Greek and Armenian forms from Proto-Indo-European *gl̥gt-, and follows Meiser in explaining the loss of initial *g- in Latin as a result of long-distance dissimilation. Per Nielsen, the Latin and Greek words can be derived from *glakt-, Old Armenian *կաղց (*kałcʻ) can be derived from *g(a)l(ḱ)t- (requiring an initial non-palatal velar), and Albanian dhallë can perhaps be derived from *ǵal(K)- (requiring an initial palatal velar); on the basis of the variability in the initial consonant and the unusual root structure, Nielsen considers the root to be non-Indo-European in origin.

Garnier, Sagart and Sagot 2017 attempt to derive the term from the root *h₂melǵ- (“milk”), instead: citing Garnier 2016's reconstruction of a verb *ambi-blactāre (“to milk with both hands”) > *amblactāre, they suppose that it was subsequently reanalyzed as *amb-lactāre > lactāre, which subsequently yielded the noun lact (> lac) via back-formation.

For another possible relation, see dulcis.

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈɫak]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈlak]

Noun

lac n (genitive lactis); third declension

1. milk

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

2. for something sweet, pleasant
   • c. 189 BCE, Plautus, Truculentus 178–179:

     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.

   • c. 95 CE, Quintilianus, Institutio oratoria 2.4.5:

     […] , ut [doctores] teneras adhuc mentes […] satiari velut quodam iucundioris disciplinae lacte patiantur.

     […] , that teachers may let minds tender still be satisfied as by the milk of a more pleasant discipline.

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, Ovidius, Ars Amatoria 1.290:

     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.

Usage notes

• Rarely used in the plural.

Declension

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

	singular	plural
nominative	lac	lacta
genitive	lactis	lactum
dative	lactī	lactibus
accusative	lac	lacta
ablative	lacte	lactibus
vocative	lac	lacta

Derived terms

• ā lacte cūnīsque
• collactāneus
• lac pressum
• lactāneus
• lactāris
• lactārius
• lactātum
• lacteō
• lacteolus
• lactēscō
• lacteus
• lacticīnium
• lactifer
• lactineus
• lactō
• lactoris
• lactōsus
• lactūca
• lactūcārius
• qui plus lactis quam sanguinis habet
• tam similem, quam lactis

Descendants

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

See also

• cāseus
• mulgeō
• ūber

Further reading

• “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, 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^[4], London: Macmillan and Co.
  • (ambiguous) to imbibe error from one's mother's breasts: errorem cum lacte nutricis sugere (Tusc. 3. 1. 2)
    

Middle French

Etymology

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

Noun

lac m (plural lacs)

1. lake; pond
2. pit (hole in the ground)

Descendants

• French: lac

References

• lac on Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330–1500) (in French)

Norman

Etymology

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

Noun

lac m (plural lacs)

1. (Jersey, geography) lake

Occitan

Etymology

Inherited from Old Occitan lac, from Latin lacus (“lake”), from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”).

Pronunciation

• (Niçard) IPA^(key): [ˈla.k(e)]
• (Béarn) IPA^(key): [lak]

• Audio (Béarn):

  (file)

Noun

lac m (plural lacs)

1. lake

References

• "lac", in dicodòc: multidiccionari occitan (oc→fr)
• Diccionari General de la Lenga Occitana‎^[5], L’Academia occitana – Consistòri del Gai Saber, 2008-2026, page 398

Old English

Alternative forms

• lǣc

Etymology

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”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /lɑːk/
• Rhymes: -ɑːk

Noun

lāc n or f

1. play, sport
2. battle, strife
3. gift, offering, sacrifice, booty; message
   • late 10th century, Ælfric, Lives of Saints

     Æfter þisum bebēad sē ablenda Datianus þæt mann his dēadan godas dēorwurþlīċe frætewode and þæt deofles templ mid dēorwurþan seolfre, and hēt þider lǣdan þone, wende þæt hē wolde wurþian his godas and his lāc ġeoffrian þām līflēasum godum.

     After this the blinded Datianus ordered that his dead gods be richly adorned and that the Devil's temple be adorned with silver, and ordered the faithful martyr to be brought to there, so that he would worship and offer sacrifices to the lifeless gods.

   Hie drihtne lac begen brohton.

   They both brought an offering to the Lord.

Declension

when neuter

Strong a-stem:

	singular	plural
nominative	lāc	lāc
accusative	lāc	lāc
genitive	lāces	lāca
dative	lāce	lācum

when feminine

Strong ō-stem:

	singular	plural
nominative	lāc	lāca, lāce
accusative	lāce	lāca, lāce
genitive	lāce	lāca
dative	lāce	lācum

Derived terms

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

Related terms

• -lāc
• lācan
• lǣċan

Descendants

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

Old French

Alternative forms

• lai (early)

Etymology

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-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”).

However, there is also the homonymous Old Occitan lac (“lake; pit”) from Latin lacus, which is thus cognate with Old French lai, and the most obvious explanation is that the Old French word is simply borrowed from this one.

Noun

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

1. body of water, lake
2. ditch, trench
3. pit, hole; den

Descendants

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

Old Irish

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈl̪aɡ/

Adjective

lac

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

Derived terms

• lacaid
• lacatus

Descendants

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

Mutation

Mutation of lac

radical	lenition	nasalization
lac also llac in h-prothesis environments	lac pronounced with /l-/	lac also llac

Note: Certain mutated forms of some words can never occur in Old Irish.
All possible mutated forms are displayed for convenience.

Further reading

• Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “lac”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language

Old Occitan

Etymology

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

Noun

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

1. lake
2. pit (hole in the ground)

Descendants

• Occitan: lac

References

• “lac”, in Dictionnaire de l’occitan médiéval en ligne (in German and French), Munich: LMU, 2013–2026

Romanian

Etymology

Inherited from Latin lacus (“lake”), 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.

Noun

lac n (plural lacuri)

1. lake

Declension

	singular		plural
	indefinite	definite	indefinite	definite
nominative-accusative	lac	lacul	lacuri	lacurile
genitive-dative	lac	lacului	lacuri	lacurilor
vocative	lacule		lacurilor

Derived terms

• lăcos

Romansh

Etymology

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

Noun

lac m

1. paint

Synonyms

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

Zazaki

Alternative forms

• laj
• laz

Etymology

Compare Middle Armenian լաճ (lač).

Pronunciation

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

Noun

lac m

1. son

   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.