What is the difference between lake and pond; mountain and hill; or river and creek?
There are no official definitions for generic terms as applied to geographic features. Most descriptions are ambiguous at best. The Geographic Names Information System database (GNIS) utilizes 63 broad categories of feature types originally defined solely to simplify the query and retrieval of similar features from the database. For example, a lake is classified in the GNIS as a “natural body of inland water,” a definition that may not apply in other contexts. There are 54 other generic terms with characteristics similar to a lake, and all are classified as a lake, including features called ponds. It might be generally agreed that a pond is smaller than a lake, but even this is not always true. Remember the Atlantic Ocean is often affectionately known as “the Pond.” As for mountains and hills…the British Ordnance Survey once defined a mountain as having 1,000 feet of elevation, anything less was a hill, but the distinction was abandoned sometime in the 1920’s. There was even a movie
