creek

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A small stream, often a shallow or intermittent tributary to a river.
• noun A channel or stream running through a salt marsh.
• noun Chiefly British A small inlet in a shoreline, extending farther inland than a cove.
• idiom (up the creek (without a paddle)) In a difficult, unfortunate, or inextricable position.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun 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.
• noun A small stream; a brook; a rivulet. See crick.
• noun A turn or winding.
• noun Hence A device; an artifice; a trick.
• noun A small seaboard town of insufficient importance to have a customs-station of its own.
• To twist and wind; form a creek.
• noun An obsolete spelling of creak.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun 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.
• noun A stream of water smaller than a river and larger than a brook.
• noun Any turn or winding.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun 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.
• noun Australia, New Zealand, Canada, US A stream of water smaller than a river and larger than a brook.
• noun Any turn or winding.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

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