creek
Pluralcreeks
- 1A stream, typically of fresh water and smaller than a river; in Australia, also a body of water the size of a river.
The kids spent the afternoon catching crawdads in the creek behind the farmhouse.
The station homestead stood above a creek so broad and deep that visitors took it for a river.
Note
In Australia the word sets no upper limit on size: a watercourse as broad as a river can still be a creek, whereas elsewhere it usually means water smaller than a river. Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon (1997) ranks the two together as things a traveler senses ahead before any sound or sight announces them: "a River or Creek ahead."
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 2 facts
- Thomas Pynchon wrote Mason & Dixon, first published in 1997. en.wikipedia.org
- The novel uses the quoted wording and describes sensing an approaching river or creek before other signs announce it. en.wiktionary.org
- 2A small, narrow inlet, often of salt water, leading from the sea or the main channel of a river, especially in an estuary; such an inlet often serves as a sheltered mooring for small boats.
At low tide the creek drains to a ribbon of mud, and the moored dinghies settle on their keels.
We rowed up the creek from the estuary, past the salt marsh and the old oyster beds.
Similarinlet
Note
A British reader pictures salt water here, an arm of the sea or an estuary reaching inland, while in North America, Australia and New Zealand the word means a freshwater stream. Middle English had the word in two shapes, creke and cryke, the second probably from Old Norse. Rudyard Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) pairs it with another narrow channel: "forsaken guts and creeks."
Less common meaning
- 3Any turn or winding in the course of something.
Practice
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Origin
Middle English had two forms. Creke, creake is of unclear origin and possibly continues Old English *creca, from Proto-Germanic *krikô, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ger- ("to wind, to turn"). Beside it stood cryke, crike, probably from Old Norse kriki ("cove, bight"). Related words include Dutch kreek ("creek, cove, inlet, bight"), West Frisian kreek, and French crique ("cove"), which was borrowed from Germanic. Early British settlers in Australia and the Americas used it for inlets, and as settlement followed the inlets upstream and inland, it came to mean any small waterway.