Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of, relating to, or living in open oceans or seas rather than waters adjacent to land or inland waters: pelagic birds.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Marine; oceanic; of or inhabiting the deep or open sea: said of those aquatic plants and animals which inhabit the high seas. Also Pelagian.
- Specifically, in marine biol.: Living at the surface of the high sea at a distance from land.
- Living at the surface of the sea. See the extract.
- Living at the surface of the water, either salt or fresh.
- Floating or swimming in the water, either at the surface or at any depth below it.
- In geology and geography, of or pertaining to the deep ocean; far from land.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Of or pertaining to the ocean; -- applied especially to animals that live at the surface of the ocean, away from the coast. Compare
benthic .
WordNet 3.0
- adj. relating to or occurring or living in or frequenting the open ocean
Etymologies
- Latin pelagicus, from Greek pelagikos, from pelagos, sea; see plāk-1 in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“Marine biodiversity has been particularly threatened by the uncontrolled illegal fishing by large ships owned by mainland or Asiatic fishing companies in pelagic zones, often inside the Marine Reserve, using high technology methods such as long-lining.”
Galápagos National Park & Galápagos Marine Resources Reserve, Ecuador
“Fail to use an approved "pelagic" system for weighing herring, mackerel and horse mackerel.”
“Whale sharks are pelagic, meaning they roam the open sea, and can only be seen along the coast during seasonal feeding aggregations.”
“Every kind of pelagic gamefish cruises in this warm, blue flow.”
“We did a good deal of "pelagic" sealing; that is, catching seals swimming.”
The Cruise of the Cachalot Round the World After Sperm Whales
“A "pelagic", or open-ocean, shark - so attacks in coastal waters are exceedingly rare”
“The total number of false killer whales in Hawaiian waters, including both the insular population and a "pelagic" population that also interacts with longlines, is estimated at only about 600.”
“And in South America, the concern is that climate change will alter coastal upwellings, which sustain huge catches of anchovies, sardines and other varieties of small "pelagic" fish.”
“In northern South America, the concern is that climate change will alter coastal upwellings, which sustain huge catches of anchovies, sardines and other varieties of small, "pelagic" fish.”
“Guillemots are pelagic, meaning they spend most of their lives at sea, coming ashore only to breed, yet they rarely venture far from shore.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pelagic’.
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Gene Wolfe
Please contribute your favorite words from any of Gene Wolfe’s books to this prize-winning list.
In case you come across words in this list which are too commonplace to fit in, please ...gallipot, roost, badelaire, oblesque, execration, dhole, amschaspand, arctother, chalcedony, penitence, asimi, autarch and 839 more...
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Pet Rocks and Carbon Footprints
Soil samples for stone soup.
palynology, stratigraphy, tse'bit'ai, tse bitai, tse bit ai, bitai, minette, maar, lithosphere, peridotite, gneiss, gabbro and 115 more...
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Words beginning with P
peripatetic, pearlescent, perfunctory, palliate, permafrost, prosthetic, pliant, pluvious, percussion, procrastinate, progeria, prognathism and 49 more...
heypacksees Beyond the littoral, above the benthic. The open sea. Nov 21, 2011