Okeanos

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A name referring to the vast body of salt water covering much of the Earth's surface; in ancient mythology, a divine figure embodying the personification of the ocean or a great river encircling the world; used poetically to describe an immense, boundless expanse of water
2. The term denoting the great oceanic expanse forming the Earth's major aquatic system; mythologically, a titan representing the encompassing river believed to surround the lands; employed figuratively to signify an infinite or all-encompassing watery realm
3. Identifies the principal ocean covering earth’s surface areas; ancient lore’s personification of the ocean stream encircling the earth; commonly used in literature to evoke the concept of the endless sea or water domain

Etymology: Ancient Greeks imagined Okeanos not as a sea but as a vast river that encircled the flat disc of the earth, and the god himself was a Titan, a son of Heaven and Earth. Mythology made him the father of the river-nymphs and of thousands of other rivers, so the ocean was less a body of salt water than the source of all fresh water. The word reached English through Latin "Oceanus", which Romans used for the same mythical stream and the same encircling waters. The English word "ocean" came from that Latin form, while the Greek name itself was taken into English directly, so "okeanos" survives as a separate borrowing alongside its older doublet "Oceanus". Poets have kept the Greek form alive, using it to suggest the old cosmic river rather than the modern sea.

Synonyms: ocean, sea, large body of water