Creek (toponym)
Creek is a term in the English language for smaller watercourses or bays and similar other water and valley forms.
etymology
The word comes from Middle English creke , from Old Norse kriki . The word originally referred primarily small narrow muzzle booked the seaside ( estuaries ). In England itself, as well as in the various areas of British colonization , the word then gradually changed its meaning, also to corresponding bays on lakes , and on the one hand as a general word for smaller streams and channels , on the other hand for narrower waterways , and - because these shallow bays often falling dry with high and low tides - also for intermittent watercourses , i.e. regularly or temporarily dry watercourses of various kinds.
Own meanings in different areas of the English-speaking area:
- In British English it is generally used to refer to a watercourse that is water-bearing when the tide changes . This corresponds to the German-language name Priel .
- In the USA and Canada, creek means a mostly small tributary of a river, usually the size of a stream , more rarely that of a small river.
- On the Atlantic coast , the original meaning in the sense of (small) estuary is still preserved, and corresponds to Inlet (as a narrow shape, while more rounded bays are called Cove ).
- In the coastal area of the Florida Keys , creek describes a narrow channel between closely spaced islands off the coast.
- In India , it is a saltwater bay that is surrounded by mangroves .
- In Australia it is a - also larger - river that falls dry for a long time and only rarely carries water , a dry river in the rainy season (periodically) or with occasional rainfall in the hinterland (episodic) . The meaning corresponds roughly to that of a wadi in northern Africa or a rivier in southern Africa.
- In East Africa , creeks are deeply penetrating, often branching sea bays into which small rivers or streams flow, the size of which is out of proportion to the extent of the bay.
The name is very rich in name-forming in many English-speaking areas, also for other toponymics , i.e. places, areas and the like.
See also
- List of all Wikipedia articles whose title includes Creek
Individual evidence
- ↑ creek . In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary , Merriam-Webster Online.
- ^ A b Barry Lopez, Debra Gwartney: Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape. Trinity University Press, New York 2011, ISBN 1-59534-088-2 , p. 92: “ Creek is a word that has been transformed by the North American continent. The British usage of the term was its first meaning here, and this definition still applies along the Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Maine: a saltwater inlet narrower than a cove; the estuary of a stream. But as settlement probed inland beyond the coastal plain, following watercourses upstream well past the influence of salt and tides, the word creek held on for any flow ... ”
- ^ Creek . In: Deutsches Koloniallexikon , Volume I, p. 279, Leipzig 1920 (webrepro on uni-frankfurt.de).