sargasso

American  

[sahr-gas-oh] / sɑrˈgæs oʊ /

noun

• sargassos
  plural

1. a gulfweed.

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sargasso British  

/ sɑːˈɡæsəʊ /

noun

1. another name for gulfweed sargassum

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• sargassos
  plural

Etymology

Origin of sargasso

1590–1600; < Portuguese, perhaps special use of sargaço rockrose < Latin salicastrum, equivalent to salic- (stem of salix ) willow + -astrum, neuter of -aster -aster ¹

Explanation

Use the noun sargasso when you're talking about a particular kind of seaweed that's mostly found in the Atlantic Ocean, including the region known as the Sargasso Sea. Most folks are more familiar with the place than the name for it; sargasso is a kind of brown seaweed that floats in huge masses, sometimes so dense that you'd think you could walk on it (though this is not recommended). The alternative name, gulfweed, is a nod towards the Gulf of Mexico, home to quite a lot of sargasso.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

sargasso

He looks ahead at some floating sargasso weed, where some flying fishes are skittering through the air.

From Time Magazine Archive

The next day the rain fell in torrents; long, yellow streams of water gushed from pipe and culvert, turning the roads to lakes of amber and the trodden lawns to sargasso seas.

From Lorraine A romance by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

Out of it flying-fish leaped, and through it dolphins swam in pairs, and over it sargasso drifted like cloud shadows.

From True to His Home A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin by H. Winthrop Pierce

But the sargasso itself is a curious instance of the fashion in which one form so often mimics another of a quite different family. 

From At Last by Charles Kingsley

The other half was this: with a better radarscope a ship might not have floundered into the sargasso at all....

From The Graveyard of Space by Stephen Marlowe