seabed

noun

sea·​bed ˈsē-ˌbed How to pronounce seabed (audio)
variants or less commonly sea bed
plural seabeds also sea beds
: the floor of a sea or ocean : seafloor
This atoll is the summit of an undersea volcano that rises from the seabed 10,000 feet below the surface.Kennedy Warne

Examples of seabed in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web An international search fleet surveyed 710,000 square kilometers (274,000 square miles) of seabed, peppered with trenches and peaks, before the hunt was called off in 2017. Tribune News Service, The Mercury News, 26 Feb. 2024 For example, the World War II tanker E.M. Clark sank on a relatively flat, sandy seabed in 1942 when it was torpedoed by a German submarine. Avery Paxton, Discover Magazine, 26 Dec. 2023 The discovery of oil and natural gas in the Aral's former seabed brought the building of gas production facilities — and shows Uzbekistan has little interest in restoration, experts said. Victoria Milko, Quartz, 8 Feb. 2024 Norway is instead looking to exploit the cobalt-rich crusts and polymetallic sulfides on its seabed. Eliza Gkritsi, WIRED, 12 Jan. 2024 Because it is situated on a limestone outcropping on the ridge of a tectonic plate, the soil contains ancient seabeds and a rich combination of minerals. Patricia Cohen Violette Franchi, New York Times, 7 Oct. 2023 Companies will use heavy machinery to scrape the nearby Arctic seabed for metals and minerals, such as magnesium, niobium and cobalt – vital materials in some industrial processes – according to Sky News. Peter Aitken, Fox News, 20 Jan. 2024 The area marked for mining, though less than 1 percent of the total international seabed, would still be huge. Lily Kuo, Washington Post, 19 Oct. 2023 Economic opportunities abound - from tourism to shipping to deep water ports - and there is growing interest in the vast natural resources thought to lie below the Arctic seabed floor. Danielle Bochove, Anchorage Daily News, 28 Aug. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'seabed.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1838, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of seabed was in 1838

Dictionary Entries Near seabed

Cite this Entry

“Seabed.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/seabed. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

seabed

noun
sea·​bed ˈsē-ˌbed How to pronounce seabed (audio)
: the floor of a sea or ocean

More from Merriam-Webster on seabed

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