Blonde Girl Outside In The Pond

Ponds can result from a wide range of natural processes, although in many parts of the world these are now severely constrained by human activity. Any depression in the ground which collects and retains a sufficient amount of precipitation can be considered a pond, and such depressions can be formed by a variety of geological and ecological events.
Nomenclature
In origin, pond is a variant form of the word pound, meaning a confining enclosure. As straying cattle are enclosed in a pound so water is enclosed in a pond. In earlier times, ponds were man-made and utilitarian; as stew ponds, mill ponds and so on. The significance of this feature seems, in some cases, to have been lost when the word was carried abroad with emigrants. In the United States, natural pools are often called ponds.