Billy Elliott, age 13, of Peterborough, Ont., for his question:

How is an ocean different from a sea?

Our language descended from older languages. This fact makes it rich ih synonyms ‑ several words with perhaps slightly different meanings for the same thing. For example, our word love is descended, from old English and Teutonic forebears, the word cherish, which means almost the same thing, is descended from Grcek and Latin. in the same way, our word sea comes down to us from old English ancestors and ocean comes to us from Latin parentage. In general use, ocean and sea are synonyms, each means a large body of salt water.

On a. map or globe, whore words are used very exactly, ocean is used only for the earths vast bodies of water. The word sea refers to smaller bodies of salt water ‑ which are landlocked or almost landlocked.

The vast oceans arc all linked. together with each other and with most of the seas. We can refer to the world's salt water as the seas, the sea,, the oceans or the ocean. We cannot, however, refer to the small landlocked seas as oceans.