creek

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A small stream, often a shallow or intermittent tributary to a river. Also called regionally branch, brook¹, kill², run.
2. n. A channel or stream running through a salt marsh: tidal creeks teeming with shore wildlife.
3. n. Chiefly British A small inlet in a shoreline, extending farther inland than a cove.
4. idiom. up the creek (without a paddle) Informal In a difficult, unfortunate, or inextricable position.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A small inlet, bay, or cove; a recess in the shore of the sea or of a river, or of any considerable body of water.
2. n. A small stream; a brook; a rivulet. See crick.
3. n. A turn or winding.
4. n. Hence A device; an artifice; a trick.
5. n. A small seaboard town of insufficient importance to have a customs-station of its own.
6. To twist and wind; form a creek.
7. n. An obsolete spelling of creak.

Wiktionary

1. n. UK, India A small inlet or bay, narrower and extending further into the land than a cove; a recess in the shore of the sea, or of a river.
2. n. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, US A stream of water smaller than a river and larger than a brook.
3. n. Any turn or winding.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A small inlet or bay, narrower and extending further into the land than a cove; a recess in the shore of the sea, or of a river.
2. n. A stream of water smaller than a river and larger than a brook.
3. n. Any turn or winding.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. any member of the Creek Confederacy (especially the Muskogee) formerly living in Georgia and Alabama but now chiefly in Oklahoma
2. n. a natural stream of water smaller than a river (and often a tributary of a river)