Pacific Ocean

[ puh-sif-ik oh-shuhn ]

noun
  1. the largest of the world’s five principal oceans, bordered by the American continents, Asia, and Australia, with its deepest section in the Mariana Trench: divided by the equator into the North Pacific Ocean and the South Pacific Ocean. 62,455,900 square miles (161,760,000 square kilometers).

Origin of Pacific Ocean

1
First recorded in 1560–70
  • Often the Pacific .

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use Pacific Ocean in a sentence

  • For the whole Pacific Ocean appeared to be heaving out its chest and coming on, eighty feet high.

    The Belted Seas | Arthur Colton
  • Not so very long ago Halstead commanded a yacht on the Pacific Ocean, and had some of his most rousing adventures at that time.

  • Hearing the savages tell of a great river flowing southward, he fancied that it must empty into the Pacific Ocean.

    The Story of the Thirteen Colonies | H. A. (Hlne Adeline) Guerber
  • We have now to cross this, for our faces are set towards the Pacific Ocean.

    Mexico | Charles Reginald Enock
  • In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and hardly a ripple on the waves!

British Dictionary definitions for Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

noun
  1. the world's largest and deepest ocean, lying between Asia and Australia and North and South America: almost landlocked in the north, linked with the Arctic Ocean only by the Bering Strait, and extending to Antarctica in the south; has exceptionally deep trenches, and a large number of volcanic and coral islands. Area: about 165 760 000 sq km (64 000 000 sq miles). Average depth: 4215 m (14 050 ft). Greatest depth: Challenger Deep (in the Marianas Trench), 11 033 m (37 073 ft). Greatest width: (between Panama and Mindanao, Philippines) 17 066 km (10 600 miles)

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Cultural definitions for Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The largest ocean in the world, separating Asia and Australia on the west from North America and South America on the east.

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.