But Tahoe’s waters don’t end up in one of the oceans; its outlet, the Truckee River, disappears into Nevada’s Great Basin. So, although I like your definition, you may want to revise the bit about requiring an ocean destination.
That’s why I said that the waters of a lake should end up in an ocean, not that they must. 
Really, I’m no expert in the field, I’m just giving the general rule of thumb with which I was familiar with. I’m in no position to defend said definitions as laws of nature or anything.
And it seems that the whole issue of defining “lake” vs. “pond” is being managed pretty sloppily by the Powers That Be, anyway.
Ever see a pond marked on the map ?
Ever heard of a pond with a name ?
Actually I have heard of only two ponds with a name . Golden Pond and a farmers pond that I used to play hockey on in Niagara-on-the Lake that we kids called Dawson’s Pond.
I grew up in ND/MN…there’s quite a few lakes in the area. What I’d always heard is…‘You can’t cast across a lake’. When I look at bodies of water now, I always remember that as my guideline.
Ah, OK. It seems to me, however, that if you’re going to give moral guidelines for water, there needs to be a corresponding punishment for non-compliant rivers (although come to think of it, ending up in the middle of Nevada might be punishment enough). 
There are tons of named ponds in New England, many marked as such on maps. One particularly famous one is Walden Pond.
My father lived at a house with a small body of water about 100 feet by 30 feet through which a small creek ran. I think it would be quite a stretch to call it a lake, especially when it never got over about 4 feet deep.
How about Lake Pend Oreille? Isn’t that both a lake and a pond?
[For those who don’t get it, Pend Oreille is pronounced ‘pond or AY’.]
“[Lake]Baikal’s volume, at 23,600 km3, is greater than any other fresh water lake and makes approximately 20 percent of the world’s surface fresh water. As a point of comparison, if you were to drain Lake Baikal, it would take the Great Lakes of the United States: Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario to refill the empty basin.”
I got your pond right here, buddy.
Isn’t there a height requirement to be a mountain? Otherwise the movie The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down A Mountain lied.
[QUOTE=Qadgop the Mercotan]
Tahoe’s got streams feeding into it, thereby negating pond status by definition.
[QUOTE]
That was a sarcastic response based upon Chronos’ assertation that you cannot see the other side of a “true” lake.
A park ranger once told my family that a pond has vegetation growing from the bottom at its deepest point, while a lake doesn’t. I suppose that’s a rough measure of depth also.
That’s specific to England or perhaps the UK. But note that the highest point in England (at around 3000 ft) would be considered a valley in other parts of the world.
The earlier USGS cite discusses just this. They said that the 1000 feet designation was abandoned in the 1920s.