Word.ws English Dictionary

milky sea

milky sea noun: a milky or pale blue-green glow in seawater (caused by bioluminescent plankton or bacteria), observed on some moonless nights (especially in the Indian Ocean), differing from other kinds of seafire by occurring over a vast expanse and even when the water is undisturbed (by oars, etc).

milky sea: a milky or pale blue-green glow in seawater (caused by bioluminescent plankton or bacteria),...
Image: Dr Steve Miller, from the Naval Research Laboratory; and, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

milky sea (plural milky seas)

  1. A milky or pale blue-green glow in seawater (caused by bioluminescent plankton or bacteria), observed on some moonless nights (especially in the Indian Ocean), differing from other kinds of seafire by occurring over a vast expanse and even when the water is undisturbed (by oars, etc).
    • A milky sea shines from horizon to horizon like a field of fresh snow (when only the surface layers shine) or a cloud (when deeper layers also shine).
    • Henry Grafton Chapman […] described the Milky Sea, one of the rarest aspects of the ocean, an appearance which is due to animal life. In the Indian Ocean, near the Island of Christmas, on the 1st of August, 1854, when the wind had fallen, the moon gone down, and amidst deep darkness, the sea began...1889, Manford's Magazine, volume 33, page 22
    Synonyms:
    milky seas

Examples of milky sea in a sentence

  • Henry Grafton Chapman […] described the Milky Sea, one of the rarest aspects of the ocean, an appearance which is due to animal life.1889, Manford's Magazine, volume 33, page 22
  • [A study of] milky seas failed to identify dinoflagellates as the causative agent (41).2008, Stephen Carlyle Winans, Bonnie L. Bassler, Chemical Communication Among Bacteria, page 265
  • Unlike the spark-like bursts produced by disturbed dinoflagellates in a ship's wake, a milky sea is a continuous sheen.2026, Elise M. Thornton, The Glowing Dark: The Science of Bioluminescence and the Creatures That Make Their Own Light

Synonyms of milky sea

Forms of milky sea

pluralmilky seas

Questions about milky sea

What does milky sea mean?
Milky sea means a milky or pale blue-green glow in seawater (caused by bioluminescent plankton or bacteria), observed on some moonless nights (especially in the Indian Ocean), differing from other kinds of seafire by occurring over a vast expanse and even when the water is undisturbed (by oars, etc).
How do you use milky sea in a sentence?
Henry Grafton Chapman […] described the Milky Sea, one of the rarest aspects of the ocean, an appearance which is due to animal life.
What part of speech is milky sea?
Milky sea is a noun.
What is the plural of milky sea?
The plural of milky sea is milky seas.

Words near milky sea in the dictionary

  1. milkworts
  2. milky
  3. milky disease
  4. milky quartz
  5. milky quartzes
  6. milky sea
  7. milky seas
  8. milky spore
  9. milky stork
  10. milky storks
  11. Milky Way

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: milky sea (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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