Definition of "lakelet"

The locality Strangway and his companions were now in was not unfamiliar to at least two of them, and as they knew it there was little difficulty in treading through the numerous salt lakes and lakelets which dotted the landscape.

1894, Ivan Dexter, Talmud: A Strange Narrative of Central Australia, published in serial form in Port Adelaide News and Lefevre's Peninsula Advertiser (SA), Chapter XVI

There was water in the lakelet, / Which perchance might fill two ladles, / Or if more exactly measured, / Partly was a third filled also.

1907, Kalevala, translated by W. F. Kirby, Vol. 2, London: J.M. Dent & New York: E.P. Dutton, Runo XXXI, 137-140, p. 72

The chef’s refusal to crisp the fat on a grilled pork chop — which arrived slumped on a lakelet of gravy which had been allowed to form a skin sturdy enough to see an Eskimo through the bitterest Alaskan winter — was the least of it.

2012 September 17, Matthew Norman, The Telegraph