Suez Canal
6
3.5
- proper noun
:
canal de Suez
- Finally, terrorist activities could adversely affect navigation through the Suez Canal, an important choke point.
- nationalize the Suez Canal
- the nationalization of the Suez Canal
- the Suez Canal in 1956
Cross the Suez Canal on the Sinai Peninsula at the base of Mount Sinai.
- Cross the Suez Canal on the Sinai Peninsula at the base of Mount Sinai.
- You couldn't sail from Jerusalem to Ethiopia until the Suez Canal was built, which was recently, right?
- Now it was over a year since the Turks had tried to attack the Suez Canal, but Murray thought that an active defense was his best bet anyhow.
Examples
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Africa, until the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, was not, theoretically speaking, a distinctive continent.
Academic text (2015) -
And when you look at it, you can see just how important this Suez Canal is to global shipping.
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A few years later, they opened the Suez Canal.
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Duties from the Suez Canal were also a significant source of revenue.
Academic text (1995) -
On his way home from the Suez Canal, Nimrod was involved in an accident.
Fiction book (1993) -
There were several phases in the evacuation of the civilian population of the Suez Canal cities.
Academic text (2005) -
Some of their Sinai forces reached the Suez Canal, but most were trapped.
Academic text (2003) -
In 1956, after Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company, Israel, the United Kingdom, and France invaded Egypt.
Academic text (2006) -
The Suez Canal is a vital passage for ships traveling between Europe and Asia.
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Every year, millions of tons of goods are transported through the Suez Canal.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'Suez' names the location and 'canal' denotes an engineered waterway, so 'Suez Canal' straightforwardly refers to the canal at Suez. Proper-name + noun place labels are cross-linguistically common and therefore immediately understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituents.
Etymology
Suez Canal comes from the town of Suez where the canal begins, and the word canal means a 'man-made waterway'. It was built to join the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, so it literally lets ships pass between the two seas.