Poetic words for "sky" and "sea"

[Bubulus]

"Sky" and "sea" are words that often have poetic synonyms in languages. For a conlang of mine, I came up with a poetic word for "the sky at night full of stars", and yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to find Mandarin actually has a word for this: 星空 xīngkōng (literally "star-sky"). (Note that 空 kōng by itself is typically an adjective meaning "empty", with nounal "sky" as a secondary meaning. I've mosty seen 空 kōng as part of compounds when meaning 'sky'. The normal words for "sky" are 天 tiān and the compound 天空 tiānkōng.)

What are some poetic synonyms for "sky" and "sea" that you know? If you can provide any commentary on the words, that would be even better.



English of course has "the heavens". And I think I've seen "the deep" used for the sea, but obviously rather specifically the underwater parts of the oceans, without including the surface.

(Apparently, "the firmament" is a word in English. Has anybody seen it in poetry? Also, I'm not an avid reader of English poetry, but I've sometimes seen the sky getting called "the aether" in some contexts—any comments on this one?)



Spanish similarly has the plural los cielos, which has biblical connotations (unlike English "the heavens", as far as I can tell), possibly because in Spanish "the Kingdom of Heaven" is translated as el reino de los cielos. El firmamento is another synonym, largely poetic.

The usual Spanish poetic word for "the sea" is la mar, which is the common word for the sea but with the opposite gender (normally the word is masculine: el mar). There are also a couple other synonyms for the sea, more poetic and much less widely understood by native speakers, both borrowed straight from Latin (which borrowed them from Greek): piélago and ponto. I find piélago very interesting because it has the e > ie sound change, typical of words that evolved naturally from Latin into the language—could it be it used to be a more common word in the past? Latin pelagus was poetic only in Classical Latin proper, but it is commonly found in prose in the periods afterward!



Latin poetry used the Greek borrowings aether (aetheris/aetheros, hic) and aethra (aethrae, haec) for the sky. It also had the poetic expression sub dīvō/dīvum 'under the sky', using a nominalization of the adjective dīvus 'divine'. For the sea, it commonly used a word that usually meant 'even surface', aequor (aequoris, hoc)... besides the Greek borrowings pelagus (pelagī, hoc(!)) and pontus (pontī, hic).

[vijayjohn]

In Malayalam, loanwords (from Sanskrit, if not from English) exist for pretty much everything, so naturally, there are some for 'sky' and 'sea' as well, and some of them at least are commonly used in poetry. In fact, I don't know of a native term for 'sky' unless you count the word for 'above' or something. For 'sea' (and I guess also 'ocean'), there's സമുദ്രം [səˈmʊd̪rəm]. Come to think of it, there's also സരോവരം [səˈɾoːʋəɾəm]. The first word that comes to mind for me for 'sky' is മാനം [ˈmaːnəm], which is another Sanskrit loanword and also commonly used in poetry, though another commonly used loanword for this is ആകാശം [aːˈgaːɕəm], which is literally just 'air' (or at least can mean that as well).

People in Hindu fishing communities apparently also worship the sea as a goddess, so they may use the term കടലമ്മ [kəɖəˈləmma], literally കടൽ [kəˈɖəl] 'sea' (this is the common Dravidian word for sea) + അമ്മ [əmˈma] 'mother'. [əmˈma] can also be tagged on to the end of the names of other goddesses (and is also very commonly used at the ends of women's names just in general, so you get things like "Anna" -> "Annamma").

[beispiel]

I was pleasantly surprised to find Mandarin actually has a word for this: 星空 xīngkōng (literally "star-sky").

That's quite interesting - in Danish we have stjernehimmel which also literally means "star-sky". It means the same thing as 星空.

[Dormouse559]

Apparently, "the firmament" is a word in English. Has anybody seen it in poetry?

Yes, that's basically the only place you'll see it used, besides religious texts.

Here's an example from "Hamlet": http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/html/ ... #ftln-1380

… this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging
firmament, this majestical roof, fretted
with golden fire …

Another from the Book of Genesis: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... ersion=KJV

And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

[OldBoring]

I think "firmamento" and "cieli" are also used in Italian, mainly in the religious context.

空 doesn't necessarily mean "sky", but pretty much anything that doesn't touch the ground can be considered "in the void".
http://www.zdic.net/z/20/js/7A7A.htm （meaning 3)

3. 离开地面的，在地上面的地方：～军。～气。～投。～运。

Fun fact: the two major airline alliances in the world both contain 空 in their Chinese name: Star Alliance is 星空联盟 and SkyTeam is 天空联盟.

I also find it curious that Japanese 空 (そら sora) alone can mean sky.

[vijayjohn]

I also find it curious that Japanese 空 (そら sora) alone can mean sky.

Why? Couldn't it mean the exact same thing in Classical Chinese, too?

[OldBoring]

I also find it curious that Japanese 空 (そら sora) alone can mean sky.

Why? Couldn't it mean the exact same thing in Classical Chinese, too?

はい、そうですね。

[sennacherib]

In Mandarin Chinese, the poetic words for sky and sea can vary in different contexts.

Poetic words for Sky:
苍穹 cang1 qiong2: vast heaven
长空 chang2 kong1: vast and distant sky
云天 yun2 tian1: sky above the clouds

Poetic words for Sea:
沧海 cang1 hai3: endless sea (lit. deep blue sea)
汪洋 wang1 yang2: boundless sea (less poetic than 沧海)

I looked up the dictionary and have realized there are actually more words for sky than sea in Chinese.

[Earwig]

The welkin, the empyrean, the heavenly vault, the blue yonder... There are undoubtedly many more.

[aethelixir]

i recently learnt that in japanese, there is 「天空海濶」(てんくうかいかつ) (tenkuukaikatsu) which means "the open sky and the serene sea" and i think it's beautiful, though, i haven't really read a lot of japanese poetry, so i wouldn't know if it's actually been used or not

[linguoboy]

Old Norse and Old English poetry made frequent use of poetic figures called "kennings", which generally take the form of noun-noun compounds. Examples of kennings for "sea" in Old English are seġl-rād "sail-road", swan-rād "swan-road", bæð-weġ "bath-way", hron-rād "whale-road", and hwæl-weġ "whale-way".

You can find a fairly comprehensive list of Old Norse kennings for "sea" here: https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=kenning&i=53 and kennings for "sky" here: https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=kenning&i=65. A typical example of the later is vegr sólar ("path of the sun" or "sun's way").

These expressions are occasionally found in other nearby languages as well. Example of kennings for "sea" from Old Irish poetry are adba ron "abode of seals", nemed bled "sanctuary of whales", and mag milach "plain of beasts". (Míol mór or "beast of the sea" is the Modern Irish word for "whale".)