archipelago
noun
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The Greeks called it the Aegean Pelagos and the Italians referred to it as Arcipelago (meaning "chief sea"), but English speakers now call it the Aegean Sea. Numerous islands dot its expanse, and 16th-century English speakers adopted a modified form of its Italian name for any sea with a similar scattering of islands. In time, archipelago came to refer to the groups of islands themselves, and now it is often used figuratively, as in, for example, "an archipelago of high-rise buildings."
Examples of archipelago in a Sentence
Amy Bentley, Orange County Register, 29 May 2024
Ames will use hydrophones to record Risso’s dolphins off Pico Island in the Azores, an archipelago off Portugal in the North Atlantic.
—Gary Robbins, San Diego Union-Tribune, 26 May 2024
Political tensions have simmered for years in the archipelago — pitting the island's largely pro-independence Indigenous Kanak communities against the mostly French inhabitants opposed to breaking away from France.
—Eleanor Beardsley, NPR, 15 May 2024
Three other Americans' cases are pending in the archipelago southeast of the Bahamas.
—Alex Sundby, CBS News, 24 May 2024
See all Example Sentences for archipelago 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'archipelago.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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“Archipelago.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/archipelago. Accessed 9 Jun. 2024.
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archipelago
noun
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