Sealand

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A self-declared micronation occupying a former World War II sea fort in the North Sea off the coast of Suffolk, England
2. An unrecognised microstate set up on an abandoned British naval platform in the North Sea, claimed as an independent principality
3. The name of a small self-proclaimed nation based on a disused offshore fort near the English coast, which has its own flag and currency

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "sealand" is that its modern sense, a small offshore nation, is a deliberate revival of a much older idea. The word is a plain compound of "sea" and "land", and in its oldest sense it was simply land by the sea, or land in the sea's domain. The newer meaning is what the term became once it was used for the independent micronations built on abandoned wartime platforms in the North Sea. The third sense is more striking still. It is a calque of an Old Babylonian phrase, "KUR A.AB.BA" or "māt tâmti", meaning "land of the sea". Ancient Mesopotamian writers used this phrase for the coastal lands at the edge of the Persian Gulf, and English took the same two-part image and rebuilt it from its own words. The result is a term that echoes a Babylonian name for the sea's edge, though the English compound was made independently.

Synonyms: seashore, coast, shoreline

Antonyms: inland