Meaning

noun a body of (usually fresh) water surrounded by land

noun a purplish red pigment prepared from lac or cochineal

noun any of numerous bright translucent organic pigments

originArose from a conflation of * Middle English lake (“small stream of running water, pool, lake”), from Old English lacu (“stream, pool, pond, lake”), from Proto-West Germanic *laku, from Proto-Germanic *lakō (“stream, pool, body of water", originally "a place where water runs off and collects”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *leg- (“to leak, drain”); with * Middle English lac (“lake”), from…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0