pond
POND
A body of standing water small enough that sunlight reaches the bottom everywhere — which means plants can root across its entire bed. That is the technical distinction between a pond and a lake: in a pond, the light gets all the way down. A pond is a complete world in a small container.
Etymology
Middle English ponde, variant of pound (an enclosure). Originally meant an artificially enclosed body of water. The sense of any small, still body of water developed later.
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