ˈōshən noun
( -s )
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English occean, from Old French, from Latin oceanus from Greek ōkeanos ocean, great river believed to encompass the earth
1. : the whole body of salt water that covers nearly three fourths of the surface of the globe, that has an average depth of about 13,000 feet and a maximum reported depth of 35,040 feet, that contains on the average 3 1/2 percent of dissolved salts comprising mainly common salt with smaller amounts of magnesium and calcium salts, that has a density of 1.026, and that has a floor sometimes level or gently undulating and sometimes quite irregular with narrow elongated depressions called trenches and with elevations of various shapes and sizes (as ridges, rises, seamounts and swells) — called also sea
2. : one of the large bodies of water into which the great ocean is regarded as divided (as the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and Antarctic)
3. : an immense expanse : an apparently unlimited space or quantity
that mighty tropical ocean of foliage — William Beebe
first began navigating the ocean of air — H.L.Smith b.1906