milk
/milk/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.66 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A white liquid produced by the mammary glands of female mammals to nourish their young. From certain animals, especially cows, it is also called dairy milk and is a common food for humans as a beverage or used to produce various dairy products such as butter, cheese, and yogurt.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Skyr is a product made of curdled milk."
- "2007 September 24, Chris Horseman (interviewee), Emily Harris (reporter), “Global Dairy Demand Drives Up Prices”, Morning Edition, National Public Radio […] there's going to be that much less milk available to cover any other uses. Which means whether it's liquid milk or whether it's [milk that's been turned into] cheese or yogurt, the price gets pulled up right across the board."
- "In the West it's fairly normal to drink milk in various forms into adulthood."
- "Different milks have varying amounts of fats, proteins, and lactose, and arguments abound over the relative merits and possible harms of each. For many centuries, milk with a high fat content was considered to be the best, and low-fat or skimmed milk was considered fraudulent—in fact, selling it was often illegal. Cow breeds that produce milk with a high fat content, such as Ayrshires, Jerseys, and Guernseys, have always been valued, especially for cheesemaking."
- "Where it does fall down, however, is its nutritional value. While oats are largely a healthy grain to include in your diet, the milk is highly diluted with water, giving it little nutritional value."
- "For environmentally minded consumers, the news is hard to swallow: almond milk is not healthy for the planet and the popular milk substitute is especially hard on bees."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂melǵ-der. Proto-Germanic *meluks Proto-West Germanic *meluk Old English meolc Middle English milk English milk From Middle English milk, mylk, melk, mulc, from Old English meolc, meoluc (“milk”), from Proto-West Germanic *meluk (“milk”), from Proto-Germanic *meluks (“milk”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂melǵ- (“milk, to milk”). Cognates Cognate with West Frisian molke (“milk”), Dutch melk (“milk”), Dutch Low Saxon melk (“milk”), German Milch (“milk”), German Low German Melk (“milk”), Yiddish מילך (milkh, “milk”), Danish mælk (“milk”), Faroese and Icelandic mjólk (“milk”), Norn *mjølk (“milk”), Norwegian Bokmål melk, mjølk (“milk”), Norwegian Nynorsk mjølk (“milk”), Swedish mjölk (“milk”), Gothic 𐌼𐌹𐌻𐌿𐌺𐍃 (miluks, “milk”), Greek αμέλγω (amélgo, “to milk”), Albanian mjel (“to milk”), Latvian malks, Lithuanian malkas, Belarusian малако́ (malakó, “milk”), Bulgarian мля́ко (mljáko, “milk”), Czech mléko, Macedonian мле́ко (mléko, “milk”), Polish mleko (“milk”), Russian and Ukrainian молоко́ (molokó, “milk”), Serbo-Croatian mlijéko (“milk”), Slovak mlieko (“milk”), Slovene mlẹ́ko (“milk”), Welsh blith, Tocharian A malke.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /milk/