Sea

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /siː/

Definitions

1. A large body of salt water that covers most of the Earth's surface and is connected to oceans
2. A vast and continuous stretch of saltwater that connects to the oceans and is essential for the Earth's ecosystems and climate
3. A vast expanse of saltwater that occupies significant portions of the planet's surface and interacts with oceans

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "sea" is that its ancestors were not reserved for the ocean at all. The Proto-Germanic root behind it, reconstructed as "*saiwiz", covered both salt water and fresh. Gothic "saiws" meant "lake, sea; marshland", and modern cognates still show the same overlap: Swedish "sjö" and Norwegian "sjø" mean both sea and lake, and German "See" is the word for a lake as readily as for the ocean. The English word descends from that Germanic root, so it belongs to the same family as Dutch "zee", German "See" and the Scandinavian forms. Its deeper connections are uncertain, though the root has been linked to Latin "saevus", meaning "wild, fierce", which hints that the earliest sense may have carried a sense of roughness or violence before it settled on a body of water.

Synonyms: ocean, water, lake, bay, gulf

Antonyms: land, dry land, earth