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archipelago

UK/ˌɑːkɪˈpɛlɪɡəʊ/US/ˌɑɹkəˈpɛləˌɡoʊ/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,418 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: archipelagos

An archipelago is a scattered chain of many islands. The Indonesian archipelago, sail the archipelago, an archipelago of islets.

Indonesia and the Philippines are the largest, with thousands of islands each. The word originally named the Aegean Sea rather than any islands at all, and it moved from the sea to the things in it, which is an unusual direction of travel.

Unknown · Public domain

Definitions of archipelago

  1. 1nounarchipelagoA scattered chain of many islands.C1

    “The ferry stops at several small islands as it crosses the archipelago.”

archipelago is a group of islands.

Where it comes from

Italian arcipelago first named the Aegean Sea, from Greek arkhi, chief, plus pelagos, sea.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *h₂er-

  2. Italian

    arcipelago — Aegean Sea; group of many islands

  3. English, today

    archipelago

Built from

  • pelago · Italian — (open) sea

The is Italian arcipelago (“Aegean Sea; group of many islands”), from arci- (variant of archi-) + pelago (“(open) sea”):

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Nature & Weather

Practise this word

archipelago in the wild

  • An archipelago, sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands.

    Archipelago

  • An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water.

    Archipelago

  • The Azores, officially the Autonomous Region of the Azores, is an archipelago of Portugal, in the Atlantic Ocean, about 1,400 km west of the Portuguese mainland.

    Azores

  • The Azores is an archipelago composed of nine volcanic islands in the Macaronesia region of the North Atlantic Ocean.

    Azores

  • The archipelago has a population of approximately 2.27 million inhabitants, making it the most populous overseas special territory of the European Union.

    Canary Islands

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.