Anglo-Indian. Forms: 7 laches, le(c)k, leake, lacque, laquesas (? from Skr.), 79 lak, lack, 9 lac. [ad. Hindustani lākh:Skr. laksha masc. and neut., lakshā fem.] One hundred thousand: a. of things in general; occas. used for an indefinite number; b. spec. of coins, esp. in a lac of rupees.
a. 1613. Purchas, Pilgrimage, V. vi. (1614), 478. Euery Laches containeth an hundred thousand yeares.
1653. H. Cogan, trans. Pintos Trav., lvii. 225. There was slain sixteen Laquesaas of men, each of which an hundred thousand.
1698. Fryer, Acc. E. India & P., 104. With Lamps to the Number of two or three Lacques, which is so many Hundred thousand on our Account.
1800. Asiat. Ann. Reg., 62/2. The troops of that country [China] were upwards of three lacks of horsemen.
1804. Mrq. Wellesley, in Owen, Desp. (1877), 454. Calamities would fall on lacs of human beings.
1820. T. Maurice, Hist. Hindostan, I. I. iv. 126. Four Yugs, or forty-three lacks and twenty thousand years.
1881. Lubbock, in Nature, No. 618. 407. The Laccadives meaning literally the lac of islands.
b. 1613. Purchas, Pilgrimage, V. xvii. (1614), 544. Euery Crou is a hundred Leckes, and euery Lecke a hundred thousand thousand [sic] Rupias.
1615. Coryat, Lett. fr. India, in Crudities (1776), III. L 6. The whole Present was worth ten of their Leakes, as they call them; a Leak being ten thousand pound sterling.
1687. A. Lovell, trans. Thevenots Trav., III. I. ix. 18. Great sums of money are reckoned by Leks, Crouls.
1692. in J. T. Wheeler, Madras in Olden Time (1861), I. 262. A lak of Pagodas.
1773. Gentl. Mag., XLIII. 145. Whilst Patriots of presented lacks complain, And Courtiers bribry to excess arraign.
1802. Wolcot (P. Pindar), Great Cry & Little Wool, Wks. 1812, V. 175. The lacks are not easily got Nor honestly made in a hurry.
1859. Thackeray, Virgin., xliii. Making rather too free with jaghires, lakhs, gold mohurs.
1871. Mateer, Travancore, 72. The annual revenue of the Travancore State amounts to about forty lacs of rupees.