Gulf of Bothnia
- proper noun
:
Golfo de Botnia
- Within weeks, most of the Gulf of Bothnia, the northernmost arm of the Baltic Sea, will be frozen solid.
Examples
-
The Åland Islands straddle the exit from the Gulf of Bothnia into the Baltic Sea.
Academic text (1995) -
The Aland Islands are a chain in the Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden.
Fiction book (1996) -
Notice the positive anomaly in the northwestern Gulf of Bothnia.
Blog text (15) -
Despite being four degrees warmer than today, the Gulf of Bothnia still froze over every winter, attracting thousands of seals that came to give birth and nurse their pups on the ice.
Academic text (2010) -
The last ice in the Bay of Riga and the Gulf of Finland only melted about a week ago, and the Gulf of Bothnia is still ice-covered and is expected to remain so for most of May.
Blog text (15) -
The Aland Islands are a chain in the Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden.
-
Within weeks, most of the Gulf of Bothnia, the northernmost arm of the Baltic Sea, will be frozen solid.
-
The Åland Islands straddle the exit from the Gulf of Bothnia into the Baltic Sea.
Surface Forms
Morphology
gulf + of + Bothnia
This is a compositional place-name: 'gulf' (a stretch of sea) + 'of' + 'Bothnia' (a place-name) yields a gulf associated with Bothnia. If a learner knows the constituents (in particular that Bothnia is a place), they can infer it denotes the sea arm by that place, a pattern common across languages and transparent to B1 learners.
Etymology
Gulf of Bothnia comes from the old word Bothnia, from 'botn', which meant 'bottom' or 'bay' in northern languages. People used that word for this long bay that reaches into the land between Sweden and Finland, so the name fits the northern arm of the Baltic Sea.
