Prong, Puddle, Rapid: Origins, Forms, Histories of Words Meaning River, Lake

The natural features of a region are its topography (Greek topos, "place"). Rivers, lakes, and related bodies of freshwater are important types of topographic features.

In the current alphabetic series of words that name such freshwater features, here are the origins, forms, and histories of prong, puddle, and rapid. The dates of forms and meanings come from the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

Prong
Modern English prong (16th century) comes from Middle English pronge (15th century). The word is probably akin to Middle High German pfrengen ("to press") and Gothic anaprangan ("to afflict").

The original meaning of prong is a fork (15th century).

In the Southern and Midland dialects of the United States, an inlet or a branch of a stream is called a prong (18th century).

Puddle
Modern English puddle (16th century) comes from Middle English podel (14th century). The word is akin to Low German pudel ("puddle") and Old English pudd ("ditch").

A puddle is a collection of water (14th century). Originally the word applied to a wide range of sizes, including ponds and extensive swamps. In fact, in 1596 a writer used the word puddle in reference to a swamp 4 miles long (Oxford English Dictionary). Such uses of the word are obsolete.

Puddle now denotes a very small pool of usually dirty or muddy water.

Rapid
The noun rapid (18th century) comes from the adjective rapid (17th century), from Latin rapidus ("seizing, sweeping, rapid"), from rapere ("to seize, sweep away"). The word is akin to Old English repsan ("to reprove"), Old High German refsen ("to punish"), Old Norse refsa ("to punish"), and Lithuanian aprepti ("to seize"). The unifying sense in all these words is to seize or to grasp.

The adjective rapid means swift, very quick, moving with great speed (1634).

From that sense evolved the water-related noun rapid, denoting a part of a river where a steep descent causes a fast current and where the surface is often broken by obstructions but has no actual waterfall or cascade (1765). The word is usually used in the plural but with either a singular or a plural construction.
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Encyclopaedia Britannica Ready Reference 2004. CD-ROM. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2004.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2006.

Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary. 3rd ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2007.

The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1989.