North American Plate

American  

[nawrth uh-mer-i-kuhn pleyt] / ˈnɔrθ əˈmɛr ɪ kən ˈpleɪt /

noun

Geology, Oceanography.

1. a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising Greenland and the continent of North America and the suboceanic Labrador and North American Basins, and bounded on the east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, on the south by the Caribbean and South American Plates, and on the west by the San Andreas Fault and the Aleutian Trench.

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Etymology

Origin of North American Plate

First recorded in 1945–50

Example Sentences

In Washington’s case, the Juan de Fuca Plate is sliding underneath the North American Plate, resulting in the Cascades and related volcanoes.

From Seattle Times • May 18, 2024

“The earthquakes that we experience are from ancient — hundreds of millions of years old — weak points inside of the North American Plate that are relieving some internal pressure built up from multiple reasons.”

From Washington Times • Aug. 6, 2021

And he’s astute in explaining the science: the crust of the Pacific Plate pushing under the North American Plate.

From New York Times • Mar. 24, 2020

The San Andreas fault, which forms the tectonic boundary between Earth’s Pacific Plate and North American Plate, for example, varies in width from metres to a kilometre—too narrow to show up in Magellan topographic data.

From Scientific American • Jun. 12, 2019

For thousands of years, the North American Plate, caught between the Pacific and Eurasian Plates, had been squeezed by the two larger plates.

From "Meltdown" by Deirdre Langeland