milk
/mɪlk/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms milks milking milked
- noun (uncountable) 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. “Skyr is a product made of curdled milk.”
- noun (uncountable, by extension) A white (or whitish) liquid obtained from a vegetable source such as almonds, coconuts, oats, rice, or soy beans.
- noun (countable, informal) An individual serving of milk. “Table three ordered three milks.”
- noun (countable or invariant) An individual portion of milk, such as found in a creamer, for tea and coffee. “I take my tea with two milks and two sugars.”
- noun A light white color inspired by the color of milk, usually cow's milk.
- noun The ripe, undischarged spat of an oyster.
- noun (uncountable, vulgar, slang) Semen.
- verb (transitive) To express milk from (a mammal, especially a cow). “The farmer milked his cows.”
- verb (transitive, intransitive) To draw (milk) from the breasts or udder. “to milk wholesome milk from healthy cows”
- verb (intransitive) Of a dairy cow, to produce milk.
- verb (intransitive, transitive, rare) To secrete (milk) from the breasts or udder.
- verb (transitive) To express a liquid from a creature. “The Australian government has a team that regularly milks various snakes for venom to use creating serums and antivenoms.”
- verb (transitive, figurative) To make excessive use of (a particular point in speech or writing, a source of funds, etc.); to exploit; to take advantage of (something). “When the audience began laughing, the comedian milked the joke for more laughs.”
- verb (of an electrical storage battery) To give off small gas bubbles during the final part of the charging operation.
- verb (transitive, BDSM, vulgar) To masturbate a male to ejaculation, especially for the amusement or satisfaction of the masturbator rather than the person masturbated. “Controlled milking can actually establish and consolidate a mistress’s dominance over her sub rather than diminish it.”
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
dairy milk cowmilk cow's milk m*lk mylk non-dairy milk plant milk masturbate Milk River
Etymology
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”).
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.
From Middle English milken, from Old English melcan, from Proto-Germanic *melkaną, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂melǵ-, the same root as the noun. Compare Dutch and German melken, Danish malke, Norwegian mjølke, also Latin mulgeō (“to milk”), Ancient Greek ἀμέλγω (amélgō, “to milk”), Albanian mjel (“to milk”), Russian молоко́ (molokó), Lithuanian mélžti, Tocharian A mālk-.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A white fluid secreted by the mammary glands of female mammals for the nourishment of their young, consisting of minute globules of fat suspended in a solution of casein, albumin, milk sugar, and inorganic salts. "White as morne milk." Chaucer.
- noun A kind of juice or sap, usually white in color, found in certain plants; latex. See Latex.
- verb To draw or press milk from the breasts or udder of, by the hand or mouth; to withdraw the milk of. "Milking the kine." Gay.
- verb To draw from the breasts or udder; to extract, as milk; as, to milk wholesome milk from healthy cows.
Etymology [AS. meoluc, meoloc, meolc, milc; akin to OFries. meloc, D. melk, G. milch, OHG. miluh, Icel. mj, Sw. mjölk, Dan. melk, Goth. miluks, G. melken to milk, OHG. melchan, Lith. milszti, L. mulgere, Gr. Milch, Emulsion, Milt soft roe of fishes.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “milk”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details