Meaning

(collective, geography) A group of islands..

Definitions by Sense

1. (collective, geography) A group of islands.
2. (now rare, specifically) The Aegean Sea.
3. (by extension) Something scattered around like an archipelago.
4. (transitive, rare) To scatter or be scattered so as to resemble a group of islands.

Example Sentences

For many years past the whaleship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and least known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed.

[I]n his imagination he had settled his route, through Holland and France to Sicily, which he had long wished to see, and from thence to the Archipelago […].

the Gulag Archipelago

As the seas level, as the seas / Swept into ripples by the breeze, / And archipelagoed by trees, / Majestic spreading oaks, that rise / Like island walls against the skies.

There is no debating that there is a Gardener whose gardens are spontaneous as a sunup, no crimson and purple clouds archipelagoing the morning skies.

Crevasse! The word which describes the frightful chasm into which nature's mighty stresses break glaciers, the people of the Lower Mississippi applied to the river when its destruction burst upon the land. It meant a rush of water which might be fifteen feet high and a hundred feet wide the first hour, four hundred the next, and half a mile the next day; and which hurled itself upon towns and plantations, to gouge vast cavities and carry destruction fifty miles a day; the current sweeping away everything in its immediate path, but losing its violence farther away in the placidity of a vast sea archipelagoed by tree tops and house roofs and beaconed by factory chimneys.

For a long time he had kept a pet crow called Topsy; it ate gobbets of cheese from his hand and archipelagoed the floor of his hut with droppings.

Word Forms

• archipelagos
• archipelagoes
• archipelagoing
• archipelagoed

Related Words

When Should You Use Archipelago?

Use archipelago when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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