lek
/lɛk/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.33 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
A river, the northern arm of the River Rhine in the Netherlands.
Example Sentences
- "1975, Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, figure caption, 2000, page 333, Each of the three displaying cocks occupies a small territory at the mating center of the lek."
- "Given that a combination of factors have "released" males from attending nests, why have some species organized their courtship bouts in leks, especially the tightly clumped leks that are typical of manakins and cocks-of-the-rock?"
- "Nevertheless, it does appear that many of the processes of mate choice and sexual selection described for bird and mammal leks also apply to anuran choruses."
- "Males in many lekking species have conspicuous morphological ornaments that may be targets of female choice, but male contest competition may also be involved."
- "The second reason lekking is so fascinating is because the males aggregate."
- "2010, Boaz Yuval, Jorge Hendrichs 17: Behavior of Fruit Fly in the Genus Ceratitis (Dacinae: Ceratitidini), Martin Aluja, Allen Norrbom (editors), Fruit Flies (Tephritidae): Phylogeny and Evolution of Behavior, page 437, In a recent study (Yuval et al. 1998), the size and weight of males captured either lekking or resting at the same time in the vicinity of leks were measured."
Etymology
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: lek
Usage
- Intransitive verb
- British usage
- Colloquial