creekとは 意味・読み方・使い方

別の表記

• crick (dialectal North American)
• crike, cryke (obsolete, or UK dialectal)
• crik (eye dialect)

語源

From 中期英語 creke, kreke, creake, of unclear origin.

It existed alongside a second variant in 中期英語 cryke, krike, cricke, from Old Norse kriki. The forms creke, kreke, creake possibly continue 古期英語 *creca (attested in the diminutive crecca (“creek, bay, wharf”) also found in Anglo-Latin as creca, crecca), from Proto-West Germanic *krekō, from Proto-Germanic *krekô, *krekuz (“corner, hook, angle, bend, bight”), from Proto-Indo-European *ger- (“to turn, to wind”). Compare typologically English bight, akin to bend, bow.

See also Old Dutch creka, crika (“inlet, cove, creek”), Old Norse kriki (“cove, bight”), kríkr (“angle, corner, nook, bay”), Old Norse kraki (“pole with a hook, anchor”), and possibly Old Norse krókr (“hook, bend, bight”). Modern cognates include West Frisian kreek (“creek”), Dutch kreek (“creek, cove, inlet, bight”), and French crique (“cove”) (borrowed from Germanic).

Early British colonists of Australia and the Americas used the term in the usual British way, to name inlets; as settlements followed the inlets upstream and inland, the names were retained and creek came to be used to refer to any small waterway. A similar semantic development occurred in Dutch and French, where the word originally meant "bay" but came to mean "stream" especially in the French and Dutch colonies (French Guiana, Dutch Guiana and Indonesia).

発音

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: krēk IPA: /kɹiːk/
• (米国発音) IPA: /kɹik/, (Appalachia) /kɹɪk/
• (Canada) IPA: /kɹiːk/
  • (Ottawa Valley) IPA: [kɹiːk], [kɹɪk]
• 韻: -iːk, -ɪk
• 異形同音異義語: creak, crick

名詞

creek (plural creeks)

1. (British) A small inlet, often saltwater, leading to the sea or to the main channel of a river, especially a river estuary.
   • 1853, John Ruskin, “Torcello”, in The Stones of Venice, volume II (The Sea-Stories), London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, § I, page 11:

     Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea.

   • 1887 March 21, Rudyard Kipling, “Kidnapped”, in Plain Tales from the Hills, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co.; London: W. Thacker & Co., published 1888, →OCLC, page 111:

     There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which, taken any way you please, is bad, / And strands them in forsaken guts and creeks / No decent soul would think of visiting.

2. (British) The inner part of a port that is used as a dock for small boats.
3. (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, US) A stream of water, typically a stream of freshwater smaller than a river; in Australia, also used of river-sized bodies of water.

   Hyponym: creeklet

   • 1997, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 67, in Mason & Dixon, 1st US edition, New York: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, part Two: America, page 650:

     We all feel it Looming, even when we're awake, out there ahead someplace, the way you come to feel a River or Creek ahead, before anything else,— sound, sky, vegetation,— may have announced it.

4. Any turn or winding.

同意語

• (non-British:) beck, brook, burn, stream
• (regional US terms:) run (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia), brook (New England), branch (Southern US), bayou (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Southeastern Texas)

派生語

派生した語

• Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin: kriki
• Sranan Tongo: kriki

参照

アナグラム

• ecker, Kerce