The things you learn: Teich vs. See

[pne]

Apparently, the difference between a "Teich" and a "See" (masculine) in German is that a "Teich" is man-made.

That's not something I think I ever knew; I think I made a distinction more along the lines of English "pond" vs. "lake", i.e. purely by size rather than by origin.

I also didn't know that a "Tümpel" is characterised by drying out occasionally rather than carrying water all the time; for me, it was also merely a word for a small body of standing water. (And part of my passive vocabulary, at that.) Then there are also "Weiher", which is even less familiar a word to me.

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

The Grimms argue for a Romance etymology of Tümpel, citing such forms as Provençal toumpel and Italian tonfano. This might help explain why it appears only in Austrian placenames.

The American English equivalent of Altwasser is oxbow (lake). These are extremely common where I'm from (the Mississippi Basin) and can be quite large, so I don't think of these as prone to periodic drying out.

[pne.livejournal.com]

dewp linked to "bayou", which appears to be a special case of an oxbow lake.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

To me, "bayous" are things which only exist in Louisiana. They aren't necessarily oxbows, though, because the term is also applied to slow-moving meanders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meander) in a braided stream.

(Looking at the German version of that article, I'm pleased to note that your language has a term for the island formed by an oxbow loop: Umlaufberg.)

[pne.livejournal.com]

By the way, it's interesting to compare ubykhlives's thoughts on what "billabong" means with what enwp and dewp say -- enwp focuses on the "oxbow lake" criterion, dewp on the "dries out periodically" one, so that it looks as if the two articles are describing completely different things.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

And I learned a third definition: That a billabong is a watercourse the periodically dries out.