Pacific Ocean

American  

[puh-sif-ik oh-shuhn] / pəˈsɪf ɪk ˈoʊ ʃən /

Often the Pacific

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).

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Pacific Ocean British  

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)

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Pacific Ocean Cultural  

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

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Etymology

Origin of Pacific Ocean

First recorded in 1560–70

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Pacific Ocean

Located in the Pacific Ocean 2,500 miles north east of Australia, Nauru's historical wealth was built on its vast deposits of phosphate from fossilised bird poo.

From BBC ● Jul. 21, 2026

The U.S. has not revealed the exact location of any of the 64 strikes it has carried out, saying only that they occurred in international waters in the Pacific Ocean or Caribbean Sea.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 20, 2026

The tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu on Wednesday expressed "grave and serious concern" over a Chinese test of a long-range missile that landed in the Pacific Ocean near its waters.

From Barron's ● Jul. 8, 2026

Before these discoveries, goblin sharks were known only from relatively limited regions off the western United States, Australia, and Japan in the Pacific Ocean, along with small areas of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 8, 2026

We were scheduled to fire our retro-rockets over the Pacific Ocean, west of Hawaii, whereupon we would begin a gradual descent and finally splash into the Atlantic Ocean east of Florida thirty minutes later.

From "Flying to the Moon: An Astronaut's Story" by Michael Collins