lough

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English lough, also spelled logh, loȝe and lowe,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English luh (“lake, strait”),^[5][4][6][7] borrowed from Old Irish loch (“lake, pond”).^[5][8] The Old English word is known from the Northumbrian glosses of the Lindisfarne Gospels, where it renders Latin fretum (“strait”) and stagnum (“pool”).^[3][7] The OED takes its use for a strait as a sign that it comes from Irish loch (see loch), though its vowel may fit better the British word seen in Welsh llwch (“lake, pool”);^[3] it calls the origin uncertain.^[3] Bosworth–Toller compares the Welsh word,^[7] Holthausen derives the Old English word from Old Welsh,^[9] and Weekley gives both the Irish and the Welsh word.^[10] Dictionary.com traces it to a British Celtic word that was itself apparently borrowed from early Irish,^[11] while Collins, Klein and the Oxford Dictionary of English derive lough from Irish loch directly.^[12][13][14] The Irish word goes back to Proto-Celtic *loku (“lake, pool”) and Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“pond, pool”),^[1] and Etymonline relates it to lake.^[15][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Old English, a strait or a pool, in the Lindisfarne Gospels.^[3][7] The Middle English word meant a lake or pool from about 1330, in Robert Mannyng's Chronicle,^[3][2] and Etymonline dates it to the early 14th century.^[15]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English alliterative poetry the word could mean any water, or the sea,^[3][2] and the Middle English Dictionary notes it in place names.^[2] The general sense "lake, pool" died out in England (the OED's last example is from 1829),^[3] but the spelling lough survived for the lakes and sea inlets of Ireland, recorded from Trevisa's translation of Higden's Polychronicon (before 1387).^[3][6] There the old English pronunciation was lost and the word came to be said like Irish loch, with a final /x/.^[3][14] Johnson (1755) defined it as a lake, a large inland standing water.^[16]

Timeline

• Old English – luh, glossing words for a strait and a pool in the Lindisfarne Gospels.^[3][7]
• c. 1330 – a lake or pool (obsolete in England after 1829).^[3]
• before 1387 – a lake or arm of the sea in Ireland.^[3][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. In Ireland, a lake: They rowed out to the island in the middle of the lough.^{[12][8][3][1]}
2. In Ireland, a long narrow bay or arm of the sea; an inlet, as in Lough Foyle.^[12][8][3]
3. (obsolete, 1330–1829) A lake or pool in general.^[3][6]

Word family

• Lough Neagh

Related words

• loch
• lake

Usage notes

Collins and Chambers treat lough as the Irish form of Scottish loch.^[12][17] Dolan's dictionary of Irish English records loch itself for a lake, from Irish.^[18] In the dialects of Cumberland, Yorkshire, Lancashire and Lincolnshire a lough was a small cavity or cave in a hill or rock, and in Donegal and the Isle of Man lough served as a disguised form of Lord in exclamations.^[19] The OED also records an obsolete verb lough, to stack turf (before 1640), perhaps from an Old English verb meaning to put in order.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
8. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
14. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
16. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
17. ^ The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers
18. ^ Dolan, Terence Patrick (2004), A Dictionary of Hiberno-English: The Irish Use of English, 2nd ed., Dublin: Gill & Macmillan
19. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)