by 1823 in representations of Persian or Oriental phrases, or sometimes in reference to seven seas forming part of the Hindu cosmology or to the Talmudists' supposed seven seas of Israel (some of which are obscure lakes); see seven. It is in Burton's "Arabian Nights" (1886) and probably was popularized by one of the versions of Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyam (from which Kipling got it as a book title). To the extent that the phrase has been applied, awkwardly, to global geography, they would be the Arctic, Antarctic, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, and Indian oceans.
"a student of the seas, one who systematically studies the ocean," 1886, agent noun from oceanography.
in reference to seas covering continental shelves, 1915, from Greek ēpeiros "mainland, land, continent" (as opposed to the sea and the islands), from PIE root *apero- "shore" (source also of Old English ofer "bank, rim, shore," Old Frisian over "bank") + -ic.
As the term "continental deposits" in this sense is now ingrained in Geology, we can no longer use Dana's "continental seas" without raising a question in the mind as to what is meant when their deposits are considered. For this reason we propose here to use epeiric seas (meaning seas that lie upon the continents) for the bodies of water that lie within the continents in the downwarps of the continental masses. [Louis V. Pirsson, "A Text-Book of Geology," 1915]
1590s, from Russian beluga, literally "great white," from belo- "white" (from PIE *bhel-o-, suffixed form of root *bhel- (1) "to shine, flash, burn," also "shining white") + augmentative suffix -uga. Originally the great white sturgeon, found in the Caspian and Black seas; later (1817) the popular name for the small white whale (Delphinapterus leucas) found in northern seas.
the mountainous peninsula between the Adriatic and Black seas (including Greece), probably from Turkic.
