Arafura

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A shallow body of water lying between northern Australia and the island of New Guinea, linked to the Indian and Pacific Oceans
2. The shallow marginal sea off northern Australia that separates it from New Guinea and the Indonesian islands to the north
3. A relatively shallow sea in the Indo-Pacific region, bordered by northern Australia to the south and New Guinea to the north

Etymology: Arafura is a proper noun, the name of the Arafura Sea, the shallow body of water between northern Australia and the islands of eastern Indonesia and New Guinea. Its name is generally traced to Malay or Indonesian "ara-fura" or related forms, with the sense usually given as "dark, black" or "dark sea" or as a reference to its depth and colour, but the exact etymology is not firmly established and the explanations vary between sources. The name came into European use through Dutch and Portuguese mapmaking in the early modern period, when Europeans began charting the waters of the Malay Archipelago and the Torres Strait region. The sea was named on maps long before its boundaries were fixed, and the spelling settled into the form used today as cartographers standardised the names of the regional seas.