Illustrative Context

Her house is beside the lake.

Target Sense

• The most generic noun for a naturally occurring body of still (and normally, fresh) water in the landscape, of the prototypical intermediate scale of English lake, in contrast to both a (smaller) pond and to a larger sea.
• As a guideline, the lexeme selected must be applicable to a prototypical lake large enough that swimming right across it would be an intimidating challenge to most people, but not so large that it is not possible to see across to the land at the other sides of the lake.
• In many languages the default term may also be applicable more widely, but avoid other terms specific to larger bodies of water, especially if seen as unbounded (e.g. sea, ocean, French mer), or that specifically denote relatively small scale (e.g. pond, French mare).
• Compare with the similar approach to considerations of size in the separate IE-CoR meanings river, forest, bird and leaf.)