CREEK

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Creek mean? 

• CREEK (noun)
  The noun CREEK has 2 senses:

1. a natural stream of water smaller than a river (and often a tributary of a river)

2. any member of the Creek Confederacy (especially the Muskogee) formerly living in Georgia and Alabama but now chiefly in Oklahoma

  Familiarity information: CREEK used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CREEK (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A natural stream of water smaller than a river (and often a tributary of a river)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Synonyms:

brook; creek

Context example:

the creek dried up every summer

Hypernyms ("creek" is a kind of...):

stream; watercourse (a natural body of running water flowing on or under the earth)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "creek"):

brooklet (a small brook)

Instance hyponyms:

Bull Run (a creek in northeastern Virginia where two battles were fought in the American Civil War)

Aegospotami; Aegospotamos (a creek emptying into the Hellespont in present-day Turkey; at its mouth in 405 BC the Spartan fleet under Lysander defeated the Athenians and ended the Peloponnesian War)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Any member of the Creek Confederacy (especially the Muskogee) formerly living in Georgia and Alabama but now chiefly in Oklahoma

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("Creek" is a kind of...):

Amerindian; Native American (any member of the peoples living in North or South America before the Europeans arrived)

 Context examples 

They were evidently coming down the creek from some prospecting trip.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

I encompassed it almost round, before I could find a convenient place to land in; which was a small creek, about three times the wideness of my canoe.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It was a very dark night, as the moon had not yet risen; they did not land at the harbour, but, as they had been accustomed, at a creek about two miles below.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

But to prevent them from getting behind him, he was forced back, down past the pool and into the creek bed, till he brought up against a high gravel bank.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

We travel up Klondike, up Bonanza and Eldorado, over to Indian River, to Sulphur Creek, to Dominion, back across divide to Gold Bottom and to Too Much Gold, and back to Dawson.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

My father has broad acres, the other continued, from Fareham Creek to the slope of the Portsdown Hill.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Scientists at the National Science Foundation (NSF) Bonanza Creek Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in Alaska are working to understand interactions between changing tree lines and plant-eating animals such as the snowshoe hare.

(Race across the tundra: White spruce vs. snowshoe hare, National Science Foundation)

When you think that in the last year of the war we had 140,000 seamen and mariners afloat, commanded by 4000 officers, and that half of these had been turned adrift when the Peace of Amiens laid their ships up in the Hamoaze or Portsdown creek, you will understand that London, as well as the dockyard towns, was full of seafarers.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was nothing but a rock, with one creek naturally arched by the force of tempests.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

But Spitz, cold and calculating even in his supreme moods, left the pack and cut across a narrow neck of land where the creek made a long bend around.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)