Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
Lake Superior

Lake Superior

1 2.7
The largest freshwater lake in the world on the border of the United States and Canada
  • proper noun
  • /leɪk səˈpɪrɪər/
translation icon : Lago Superior
  • The Superior Hiking Trail follows the high, rugged ridge that runs along Lake Superior, the world's largest freshwater lake.
  • shores of Lake Superior
  • views of Lake Superior
  • bitter cold of Lake Superior

Examples

  • Sparsely populated Lake County, MN, northeast of Duluth on Lake Superior, is a traditional resource-dependent county, historically rich in mining and forestry, and is fairly unionized.

    Academic text (2007)

  • Autumn in the UP rivals any place in the nation, including New England, the Smoky Mountains, or the Rockies, and the scenic shoreline of the largest freshwater lake in the world, Lake Superior, adds great interest.

    Academic text (2007)

  • The huge Lake Superior, one of the Great Lakes, lies to the northeast of the state.

    Blog text (13)

  • The drive west along Lake Superior is beautiful, and one eventually comes to the crossroads town of Paradise, and then White Fish Point.

    Academic text (2007)

  • Although I love to kayak, I do not have the courage or strength to take my little boat onto the wilds of Lake Superior.

    Academic text (2007)

  • The ferry that goes to Isle Royale National Park, the island home to wolves and moose within Lake Superior, leaves from Houghton.

    Academic text (2007)

  • These locks connect Lake Superior and the Saint Mary's River, which flows into Lake Huron, and they are busy with freighter traffic.

    Academic text (2007)

  • Porcupine Mountain State Park is 58,000 acres of mostly virgin hemlock and pine along Lake Superior, but with deciduous trees as well.

    Academic text (2007)

  • When the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior in 1975, it inspired a popular Gordon Lightfoot song.

  • Up in Duluth, Lake Superior was frozen fast to the snowy shoreline.

Synonyms

Superior
vsLake Superior
22 3.9

A very large fresh water lake in North America that is bigger than the other Great Lakes

focuses on depth and volume and border location rather than mainly surface area

Surface Forms

Lake Superior main

Morphology

lake + Superior

This follows the regular toponymic pattern 'Lake + name' so a learner who knows 'lake' and the word/name 'Superior' can infer it refers to a lake called Superior. They might not know its specific superlative properties or exact location, but the basic referential meaning is directly compositional and cross-linguistically recognizable.

Etymology

Lake Superior gets its name from early French explorers who called it 'lac supérieur', meaning the 'upper' or 'higher' lake in the group. Because it was the top and the biggest of those lakes, the word Superior stayed and today it is the name of the largest freshwater lake in the area.