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What is a word equivalent to 'oceanic' but specific to a lake?

It'd be the blank in this analogy:

oceanic : ocean :: _____ : lake
(oceanic is to ocean as _____ is to lake)

The context in which I'm trying to use this word is something like what follows:

Oceanic creatures, as opposed to _____ creatures...

(I'm trying to avoid using 'creatures that live in lakes' for the second part)

The obvious construction that comes to my mind is 'lakely,' but given that this is not in the dictionary, I'd appreciate an actual word.

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    @LucianSava: Better would be freshwater creatures. ;-)
    – Robusto
    Commented Nov 20, 2022 at 16:04
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    Given that limnologists study lakes, do you mean like how limnology is the freshwater equivalent of oceanography? Or are you looking for something to oppose pelagic creatures and estuarine creatures?
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Nov 20, 2022 at 20:11
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    @LucianSava "freshwater" includes rivers and streams as well as lakes, which may or may not be what is wanted.
    – R.M.
    Commented Nov 20, 2022 at 23:09
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    My silly brain went with "Laconic", which means something like "Terse" or "Minimal" in speech. Wrong meaning entirely, but I bet there's a pun somewhere in there.
    – Ruadhan2300
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 12:13
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    Also, usually you would say "marine" instead of "oceanic". I believe oceanic actually refers to the specific area of islands called Oceana.
    – DKNguyen
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 12:33

6 Answers 6

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62

One possibility is lacustrine,

which Merriam-Webster defines as:

of, relating to, formed in, living in, or growing in lakes

Another possibility, and the one I'd recommend if you're not writing for a scientific audience (and maybe even if you are), is just to say as opposed to lake creatures, using lake as an attributive noun.

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    I'd take it a step further: ocean creatures, as opposed to lake creatures...
    – Tinfoil Hat
    Commented Nov 20, 2022 at 15:30
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    Nah, it's a cool word I say use it :)
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 3:43
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    I'm got a doctorate in biology, and I didn't know this word. I would avoid it.
    – Jack Aidley
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 10:54
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    @Anton: I'm sure the word has a place. However, if the OP is asking then it is likely that they are not, in fact, part of a community in which the word is widely used or understood. An obscure technical term that even an audience with relevant education doesn't understand is unlikely to be the best choice of word.
    – Jack Aidley
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 21:17
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    French speaking persons will understand it well because lacustre was the first thing that came to me, and according to google n-gram it reached its peak in 1974.
    – Jylo
    Commented Nov 22, 2022 at 10:03
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Since virtually nobody is going to know Peter Shor's erudite offering (lacustrine), you might try a simpler equivalent: lake-dwelling.

The equivalence would then be oceanic creatures vs. lake-dwelling creatures.

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    @sourcream: That matters not at all. The point is, if you addressed 100% of the English-speaking population, virtually everyone would understand "lake-dwelling" while only a very tiny fraction (did you look at the values in the y-axis of the graph?) would understand "lacustrine." Besides, NGrams are virtually worthless for drawing conclusions about language.
    – Robusto
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 1:13
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    Some things should be self-evident.
    – Robusto
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 3:53
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    @sourcream are you genuinely demanding citations for a claim that "lacustrine" is going to be understood by far fewer people than "lake-dwelling"?
    – Chris H
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 8:11
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    @sourcream I've never heard the word "lacustrine" before, and that is strong evidence that it's an obscure word. Both the word "lake" and the word "dwelling" seem like common words to me, and that's evidence that most English speakers know what both of those words mean.
    – Tanner Swett
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 13:20
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    Saying that "lake-dwelling" will be more widely recognized than "lacustrine" is not a bold claim, it's self-evident from the fact that "Lake-dwelling" is a compound word made of two much more common words. The fact that the combination of the two is rare in literature does not mean the individual words themselves are poorly understood, nor does it change the way people read compound words. Google Ngrams is NOT a measure of how widely understood a word will be.
    – barbecue
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 13:31
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Limnic is a term that can be considered which covers other still freshwater bodies like swamps and ponds also, but not flowing bodies of water like rivers. It was borrowed from German limnisch, and it is ultimately from Greek λίμνη (límnē) 'lake, marsh, basin'.

The definition of the adjective limnic from two dictionaries:

relating to bodies of water with low salt concentration, such as lakes and ponds

Collins

  1. Relating to fresh water, typically a lake or swamp; freshwater
  2. (geology) deposited in a lake or swamp

Wiktionary

It appears to be mainly used in geology and a more familiar usage is in the term limnic eruption (a natural disaster in which dissolved carbon dioxide suddenly erupts from deep lake waters). I've also found usages where the adjective limnic modifies fauna (the animals of a particular region or time period). Example usage:

The terrestrial fauna of the world’s largest mountain range, the Himalayas, has been moderately well studied, but this is not the case with the limnic fauna, and especially molluscs.

Ulrich Bößneck, Catharina Clewing, and Christian Albrecht "Exploring high-mountain limnic faunas: discovery of a novel endemic bivalve species (Sphaeriidae : Pisidium) in the Nepal Himalayas," Invertebrate Systematics 30(6), 588-597, (13 December 2016). https://doi.org/10.1071/IS15043

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Lentic:

: of, relating to, or living in still waters (such as lakes, ponds, or swamps)

M-W

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    Also spelled lenitic. You should tell people this stillwater word of yours comes from Latin lentus for slow. Here’s its swiftwater antonym lotic (<L. lotus) in action: “Along the shores of the Great Lakes there are lotic communities where the wave action is incessant, thus producing the fundamental conditions of a lotic environment and presenting an exception to the general statement that all lotic environments are streams.” ―R. N. Chapman in his Animal Ecology xvii. 347 from 1937.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Nov 22, 2022 at 1:25
  • Presumably this is a sibling term to Benthic
    – Ruadhan2300
    Commented Nov 24, 2022 at 12:11
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I come late to this discussion but, being an oceanographer (and to a lesser extent a limnologist), I am well used to the adjective oceanographic and noun oceanography, with the corresponding freshwater equivalents limnological and limnology.

With that in mind, oceanic refers to oceans, bodies of marine water (typical salt content 3.5%), whereas limnic refers to bodies of relatively low or zero salt content.

A reliable non-technical definition of limnic is given by Collins:

Collins
limnic:
relating to bodies of water with low salt concentration, such as lakes and ponds

The adjective limnic therefore applies to rivers, lakes, streams and other volumes of fresh or near fresh water and is not a word confined to lakes.

Hence, limnic and its associated words (limnology, limnological) include lakes but are not restricted to them.

Two alternatives remain: limnetic and lacustrine

Merriam Webster
limnetic:
of, relating to, or inhabiting the open water of a body of fresh water

Merriam Webster exemplifies the commonly understood definition of lacustrine:

Merriam Webster
lacustrine:
of, relating to, formed in, living in, or growing in lakes

There is a comprehensive literature that uses the word. See for numerous examples too many to quote here:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=studies+of+a+lacustrine+thermocline&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

Of these two possibilities, the prime candidate specific to lakes is thus lacustrine

And that is why I voted for the relevant earlier answer.

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  • I've already explained what limnic is with all the details and mentioned as a term that can be considered. Lacustrine was already accepted as the answer and people can give alternative answers. I'm not just giving a word with no details and thoughts. For example, you've mentioned limnological, and it means "of or pertaining to limnology" and it is mainly used as "limnological studies". Perhaps, you could write a comment about your thoughts (without the repetitions).
    – ermanen
    Commented Nov 23, 2022 at 5:34
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    @ermanen I think it entirely clear that you answered with details and thought; that and your assiduity are not in question. Equally, I hope I made clear that limnic, limnological and limnology all deal with water of salinity low relative to the sea. This group of words is therefore not specific to lakes. The more restricted word, only applicable to lakes, is lacustrine. As I remarked, I came late to this, recognise the effort others have made, so wrote no more than is necessary to clarify the point.
    – Anton
    Commented Nov 24, 2022 at 22:29
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Limnal. Not to be confused with liminal.

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    Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please edit to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.
    – Community Bot
    Commented Nov 22, 2022 at 21:09
  • Limnic is the preferred word from the same root which I've provided in my answer. Only MW defines limnal as "of or relating to lakes" with no citations and the word is not in OED. Limnal is an unfortunate coinage as there is liminal also and google search tries to correct it to liminal. It is not really used, even in scientific context.
    – ermanen
    Commented Nov 22, 2022 at 21:25

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