atoll

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Related to atoll: Midway Atoll

atoll

An atoll is created as a coral reef builds up around an eroding volcanic island.

a·toll

(ăt′ôl′, -ŏl′, ā′tôl′, ā′tŏl′)

An island or chain of islets connected by a coral reef that nearly or entirely encloses a lagoon.

[Dhivehi atholhu; probably akin to Sinhalese ätul, interior (from the interior lagoon), probably from Sanskrit *antala-, interior, variant of antara-; see en in Indo-European roots.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

atoll

(ˈætɒl; əˈtɒl)

(Physical Geography) a circular coral reef or string of coral islands surrounding a lagoon

[C17: from atollon, native name in the Maldive Islands]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

at•oll

(ˈæt ɔl, -ɒl, -oʊl)

n.

a ring-shaped coral reef or a string of closely spaced small coral islands, enclosing or nearly enclosing a shallow lagoon.

[1615–25; earlier atollon < French]

atoll

An atoll develops (from left to right) when a volcanic island erodes and a ring of coral grows up around it. The depression left by the crater of an eroding volcano fills with water, forming a lagoon.

a·toll

(ăt′ôl′, ā′tôl′)

A coral island forming a ring that nearly or entirely encloses a shallow lagoon.

The American Heritage® Student Science Dictionary, Second Edition. Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

atoll

A ring-shaped coral reef enclosing a lagoon.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

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Noun

atoll - an island consisting of a circular coral reef surrounding a lagoon

coral reef - a reef consisting of coral consolidated into limestone

Translations

atolli

atol

atoll

atoll

[ˈætɒl] N → atolón m

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

atoll

[ˈætɒl] n → atoll m

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

atoll

n → Atoll nt

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

atoll

[ˈætɒl] n → atollo

References in classic literature ?

The atoll of Hikueru lay low on the water, a circle of pounded coral sand a hundred yards wide, twenty miles in circumference, and from three to five feet above high-water mark.

Half an hour later, Huru-Huru, watching from the seaward side of the atoll, saw the two boats hoisted in and the Aorai pointing her nose out to sea.

Miles in length, carrying tens of thousands of tons in weight, its impact shook the frail atoll like an earthquake.

This was the highest spot of land in miles, and already, in many places on either hand, the great seas were making a clean breach of the slender ring of the atoll and surging into the lagoon.

Even as Captain Lynch spoke, a great watery mass smote the atoll.

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Didn't he fetch the atoll after eighteen days in the longboat?

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In such way had vanished all the worlds and harbours and roadsteads and atoll lagoons where the Ariel had had lifted her laid anchor and gone on across and over the erasing sea-rim.

From Malaita the Ariel steered west of north to Ongtong Java and to Tasman--great atolls that sweltered under the Line not quite awash in the vast waste of the West South Pacific.

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I live on an atoll, a low island, it is a strip of land surrounding a lagoon, and its beauty is the beauty of the sea and sky and the varied colour of the lagoon and the grace of the cocoa-nut trees; but the place where Strickland lived had the beauty of the Garden of Eden.

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Near Keeling Atoll, in the Indian Ocean, I observed many little masses of confervae a few inches square, consisting of long cylindrical threads of excessive thinness, so as to be barely visible to the naked eye, mingled with other rather larger bodies, finely conical at both ends.

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All through the New Hebrides and the Solomons and up among the atolls on the Line, during this period under a tropic sun, rotten with malaria, and suffering from a few minor afflictions such as Biblical leprosy with the silvery skin, I did the work of five men.

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In the coral-producing oceans such sunken islands are now marked, as I believe, by rings of coral or atolls standing over them.