sea lane

American  

noun

1. a standard navigational route for ships traversing an ocean or sea.

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sea lane British  

noun

1. an established route for ships

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Etymology

Origin of sea lane

First recorded in 1875–80

Example Sentences

Like a traffic jam, even a small blockage in a single sea lane can snarl backward long after the wreckage clears.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 11, 2026

Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates pipelines bypass the strait, but those volumes are about 10% of the sea lane.

From Barron's • Mar. 18, 2026

An area of long-simmering disputes, the South China Sea serves a key sea lane for global trade.

From Seattle Times • Apr. 11, 2024

The companies will also study developing Russian ports at both ends of the sea lane — in Murmansk and Vladivostok — to handle the transfer of containers from ice-class ships to ordinary ones.

From New York Times • Jul. 23, 2021

With bad sailors or good sailors, the significant thing which had become a commonplace was that the Channel was a safely-guarded British sea lane.

From My Year of the War Including an Account of Experiences with the Troops in France and the Record of a Visit to the Grand Fleet Which is Here Given for the First Time in its Complete Form by Palmer, Frederick