What does archipelago mean?
Word: Archipelago
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Archipelago means a group of islands lying close together in a sea or ocean, or a stretch of sea that has many islands in it.
How do you spell archipelago?
Syllables: ar - chi - pel - a - go
Tricky part: The ch after ar is said like a k, so many children write arki or arci at the start. Keep the ch, as in chemist and chorus.
Watch out for: arkipelago, arcipelago, archepelago
Memory tip: Link the hard ch to another word where ch says k: picture a ship dropping its anchor among the islands.
Archipelago in a sentence
Example 1: From the plane, the archipelago looked like a string of green beads lying on blue water.
Example 2: Lakshadweep is an archipelago of small coral islands off the coast of Kerala.
Example 3: Our geography teacher drew an archipelago on the board and asked us to count the islands.
Fun Fact
The word first named a single sea, the Aegean, between Greece and Turkey, and comes from Greek words meaning chief sea. Because the Aegean is dotted with islands, the name later came to mean any group of islands.
Practise the CREST Way
Word Cookie
Insert the correct pair of letters to form a word:
archip_l_go
a) i, a
b) a, e
c) e, a
d) e, o
Show answer
c) e, a. Say it slowly as ar-chi-pel-a-go: the p is followed by e, and the l by a.
Word Cookie
Find the extra letter in the word:
archippelago
a) p
b) a
c) g
d) l
Show answer
a) p. Only one p is needed, straight after the i.
Mingle-Mangle
Form a meaningful word from the jumbled letters:
lochapigear
a) archipelago
b) architecture
c) archaeology
d) archbishop
Show answer
a) archipelago. All four begin with arch, but only one uses an i, a p, an l and a g with nothing left over.
Spell-o-Spell
Choose the correctly spelt word:
a) continant
b) valcano
c) archipelago
d) penninsula
Show answer
c) archipelago. Peninsula has one n, continent ends in ent and volcano starts with vol, so those three are wrong.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. Which of these places is an archipelago?
a) the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
b) the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu
c) the Deccan Plateau
d) the Thar Desert of Rajasthan
Show answer
a) the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
2. A sailor exploring an archipelago would spend most of the trip going between ____.
a) frozen ice sheets
b) many small islands
c) wide desert valleys
d) tall mountain peaks
Show answer
b) many small islands
