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Glite Dictionary
Bering Strait

Bering Strait

3 3.8
A narrow sea passage between eastern Russia and Alaska that connects the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean
  • noun
  • /ˈbɛrɪŋ streɪt/
translation icon : estrecho de Bering
  • According to the Clovis-first theory, a small group of hunters—perhaps no more than 100—followed mammoths and other large game across the Bering Strait at the end of the last Ice Age, when ocean levels were low enough to leave a land bridge.

There was a woman that swam the Bering Strait.

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Examples

  • Many migratory birds stop along the Bering Strait during their long journeys between continents.

  • "That water to the left is the Bering Strait," the pilot shouted above the engine noise.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • Russia is separated from Finland by the Bering Strait.

    Blog text (23)

  • Marie knew about the Bering Strait and the legendary land bridge that spanned it thousands of years before.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • One population was a group of hunter-gatherers who came to the Americas from northeastern Asia across the Bering Strait.

    Academic text (2011)

  • The Bering Strait separates eastern Russia from Alaska and connects the Bering Sea with the Arctic Ocean.

  • The Bering Strait is frozen over in winter, making it a unique natural phenomenon.

Surface Forms

Bering Strait singular
Bering Straits plural

Morphology

Bering + strait

This is a straightforward composition of a proper name + geographic feature: 'Bering' (a name) + 'strait' (a narrow sea channel) yields 'a particular narrow sea channel called the Bering Strait', so a B1 learner who knows 'strait' and recognises 'Bering' as a name can infer the basic meaning. Specific location details (that it separates Russia and Alaska) are not derivable from the words alone, but the core referent as a named strait is transparently composed and common cross-linguistically.

Etymology

Bering Strait comes from the explorer Vitus Bering, who sailed near this place in the 1700s. Think of his ship passing through a narrow piece of water, a 'narrow sea' between Russia and Alaska, and that image explains why the name means the sea that separates those two lands.