SEA FLOOR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does sea floor mean? 

• SEA FLOOR (noun)
  The noun SEA FLOOR has 1 sense:

1. the bottom of a sea or ocean

  Familiarity information: SEA FLOOR used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SEA FLOOR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The bottom of a sea or ocean

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Synonyms:

Davy Jones; Davy Jones's locker; ocean bottom; ocean floor; sea bottom; sea floor; seabed

Hypernyms ("sea floor" is a kind of...):

bed; bottom (a depression forming the ground under a body of water)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "sea floor"):

abyssal zone (the deep sea (2000 meters or more) where there is no light)

continental shelf (the relatively shallow (up to 200 meters) seabed surrounding a continent)

bathyal district; bathyal zone; continental slope (the steep descent of the seabed from the continental shelf to the abyssal zone)

neritic zone (the ocean waters from the low tide mark to a depth of about 100 fathoms)

twilight zone (the lowest level of the ocean to which light can reach)

 Context examples 

The new island is perched on the north rim of a caldera on top of an underwater volcano that stands nearly 4,600 feet (1,400 meters) above the surrounding the sea floor.

(NASA Shows New Tongan Island Made of Tuff Stuff, Likely to Persist Years, NASA)

Scientists say that places where water and rock interact are important for the development of life; for example, it's possible life began on Earth in bubbling vents on our sea floor.

(Ganymede may harbor 'club sandwich' of oceans and ice, NASA)

To obtain comprehensive geomorphic, sedimentological, biological and dating information, scientists deployed underwater sonar to map the sea floor and extracted fossil reef cores at 16 locations.

(Major study reveals Great Barrier Reef’s 30,000-year fight for survival, University of Granada)

The sevengill shark usually lives in areas where the sea floor is thick with kelp, as opposed to the relatively clear-bottomed study area.

(Study indicates as great white shark disappears, living fossil moves in, Wikinews)

The insoluble compounds, such as nitriles and benzene, sink to the sea floor.

(Cassini Explores a Methane Sea on Titan, NASA)

This allowed warm seawater to flow under the shelf, causing it to lift off from the prominent sea floor ridge that held it in place.

(West Antarctica's largest glacier may have started retreating as early as the 1940s, NSF)

A chain of extinct underwater volcanoes rising 1000m or higher above the sea floor, either flat-topped or peaked and located in the eastern North Atlantic.

(Dreizack seamounts, NOAA Paleoclimate Glossary)

The buoy, created with the assistance of a grant from NSF's Ocean Technology and Interdisciplinary Coordination program, was installed off Egmont Key in the Gulf of Mexico and has been producing data on the three-dimensional motion of the sea floor.

(Geoscientists develop technology to improve forecasting of earthquakes, tsunamis, National Science Foundation)