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Webster 1913 Edition


Archipelago

Arˊchi-pel′a-go

,
Noun.
;
pl.
-goes
or
-gos
.
[It.
arcipelago
, properly, chief sea; Gr. pref [GREEK] + [GREEK] sea, perh. akin to [GREEK] blow, and expressing the beating of the waves. See
Plague
.]
1.
The Grecian Archipelago, or Ægean Sea, separating Greece from Asia Minor. It is studded with a vast number of small islands.
2.
Hence: Any sea or broad sheet of water interspersed with many islands or with a group of islands.

Webster 1828 Edition


Archipelago

ARCHIPEL'AGO

,
Noun.
[Authors are not agreed as to the origin of this word. Some suppose it to be compounded of Gr. chief, and sea; others of the Egean sea.]
In a general sense, a sea interspersed with many isles; but particularly the sea which separates Europe from Asia, otherwise called the Egean Sea. It contains the Grecian isles, called Cyclades and Sporades.

Definition 2024


archipelago

archipelago

English

An archipelago from above.

Noun

archipelago (plural archipelagos or archipelagoes)

  1. (collective) A group of islands.
    • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick:
      For many years past the whaleship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and least known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed.
  2. Something scattered around like an archipelago.
    The Gulag Archipelago

Translations

Related terms


Portuguese

Noun

archipelago m (plural archipelagos)

  1. Obsolete spelling of arquipélago (used in Portugal until September 1911 and died out in Brazil during the 1920s).