sea stack
A pillar of rock that rises from the ocean, formed by surrounding softer ground eroding away.
Noun
- A pillar of rock that rises from the ocean, formed by surrounding softer ground eroding away.
- The sea-gull sprang upwards from where he had floated on the ripple, and hied him slowly away to his lodge in his deep sea-stack; the dusky cormorant flitted past, with heavier and more frequent stroke, to his whitened...
- That this defile may have been partly eroded by the action of the sea is also very probable; and there are certain isolated pinnacles and irregular columns of agglomerate in its immediate neighbourhood which have all...
- The sea, with its tremendous battering-power, is excavating caves, just as the streams make pot-holes; only the action is horizontal, rather than vertical, the water lashing like a whip around the flanks of the...
Synonyms: stack
Origin
From sea + stack (“a heap, pile; large vertical column of rock in the sea”); stack is derived from Middle English stak (“a heap, pile, stack; large vertical column of rock in the sea”) [and other forms], from Old Norse stakkr (“a heap, pile; haystack; barn”) (compare Faroese stakkur (“sea stack”)), from Proto-Germanic *stakkaz (“pile of hay, haystack”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)teg- (“beam, pole, stick”).