archipelago
Americannoun
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archipelagos,
plural
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archipelagoes
plural
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a large group or chain of islands.
the Malay Archipelago.
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any large body of water with many islands.
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the Archipelago, the Aegean Sea.
noun
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a group of islands
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a sea studded with islands
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A large group of islands.
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A sea, such as the Aegean, or an area in a sea containing a large number of scattered islands.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of archipelago
1495–1505; alteration ( archi- for arci- ) of Italian arcipelago, alteration of Egeopelago the Aegean Sea < Greek Aigaîon pélagos
Explanation
Now here's a word, archipelago, that is super-specific: it means a group of many islands. Wouldn't it be great to build your dream house in the Galapagos archipelago? It seems that archipelago came from the Italian Arciplago, the name for the Aegean Sea, which is full of many many islands. Somehow that became the word for any sea that is chock-full of islands. You can also use archipelago to indicate some other grouping that involves neither islands nor water but is similar to them. Your little sister might create an archipelago of Lego buildings on your living room carpet.
Vocabulary lists containing archipelago
Play by the Rules: Arch
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Language Gone Wrong: Words That Started Out as Errors
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Physical Geography - Introductory
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The uncertainty ratchets up after Max heads to Malta, the small archipelago nation in the Mediterranean, to translate the work of an up-and-coming poet, and Leonie discovers that she’s pregnant.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
A similar transition is happening in Ecuador’s Galápagos archipelago.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 16, 2026
Marine accidents are a regular occurrence in Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, partly due to lax safety standards and unpredictable weather.
From Barron's ● Aug. 3, 2026
Experts at Chester Zoo said they had to brave treacherous conditions and climb cliffs to return them to their natural home, which is part of the Madeira archipelago in the Atlantic ocean.
From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2026
They would emerge a short distance away, sometimes three or four of them, a shortlived archipelago of volcanic islands.
From "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel
Hanoi says it has actively ruled over the Paracels and the Spratlys archipelagoes since the 17th Century and that it has the documents to prove it.
From BBC ● Jan. 6, 2026
The sun set long ago on the British Empire, with the exception of a few wind-battered archipelagoes scattered around the oceans.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 3, 2022
Later he became a fully qualified British master mariner, and travelled the world, particularly the archipelagoes and peninsulas of South-East Asia, where many of his tales are set.
From Economist ● Nov. 2, 2017
The two leaders, noted for their tough approach to drug offenders, signed an agreement to strengthen cooperation on maritime security in the volatile Sulu Sea separating the two archipelagoes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2016
In particular, the Tongan Archipelago lies close enough to the Fijian, Samoan, and Wallis Archipelagoes to have permitted regular voyaging between archipelagoes, and eventually to permit Tongans to undertake the conquest of Fiji.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Hundreds of thousands more breeding pairs of seabirds could return to remote island archipelagos if invasive rats were removed and native vegetation restored -- a new paper finds.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 18, 2024
Governments in these places are also investing in infrastructure to improve connectivity, which is essential in vast archipelagos like Indonesia and the Philippines.
From BBC ● Mar. 28, 2024
The yacht Grazie Mamma II carried its crew along the coastlines and archipelagos of the Mediterranean.
From New York Times ● Nov. 7, 2023
Threading your way around the installations, which mimic a passage deep into the jungle toward hidden human settlements, Salgado’s backlit, black-and-white images of sculptural rubber trees, massive freshwater archipelagos and cloud-shrouded mountains envelop you.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 16, 2023
Miraculously it survives the humidity and our moves, with only a few unwarranted archipelagos of gray mold dotting its oceans.
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
