Geography Terms Everyone Should Know

Toponymy and physical geography have a working vocabulary of around thirty terms that come up constantly. Learn these and a lot of geography reading becomes clearer.

Land shapes

• Peninsula — land almost entirely surrounded by water but connected to a larger landmass. Example: the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal); the Korean Peninsula.
• Isthmus — a narrow neck of land connecting two larger land areas. Example: the Isthmus of Panama, cut by the Panama Canal.
• Cape or point — a pointed piece of land jutting into a sea. Example: Cape Horn, at the southern tip of South America.
• Plateau — a large area of relatively flat land raised above its surroundings. Example: the Tibetan Plateau, the highest and largest in the world.
• Basin — a low-lying area where water drains inward toward a central point. Example: the Congo Basin; the Amazon Basin.
• Plain — a broad, flat, low area. Example: the Great Plains of North America; the North European Plain.
• Plateau versus mesa versus butte — a mesa is a small, flat-topped hill with steep sides; a butte is an even smaller one.

Islands and coasts

• Archipelago — a group or chain of islands, and often the sea around them. Example: Indonesia; the Philippines; Greece.
• Atoll — a ring-shaped coral island or chain of islets surrounding a lagoon. Example: the Maldives; the Marshall Islands.
• Fjord — a long, narrow, deep sea inlet with steep sides, carved by a glacier. Example: the coast of Norway; the fjords of Chile and New Zealand.
• Delta — a fan-shaped area of sediment where a river splits into channels as it enters the sea or a lake. Example: the Nile Delta; the Mississippi Delta.
• Estuary — the wide, tidal mouth of a river where fresh and salt water mix. Example: the Río de la Plata; the Thames Estuary.
• Lagoon — a shallow body of water separated from a larger sea by a reef or sandbar.

Water bodies and passages

• Strait — a narrow channel of water connecting two larger bodies of water. Example: the Strait of Gibraltar; the Bosphorus; the Strait of Malacca.
• Gulf or bay — a large area of sea partly enclosed by land; a gulf is usually larger and more enclosed than a bay. Example: the Gulf of Mexico; the Bay of Bengal.
• Sound — a wide sea inlet, or a channel between an island and the mainland. Example: Puget Sound; Long Island Sound.
• Channel — a wide strait. Example: the English Channel.
• Tributary — a river or stream that flows into a larger river. Example: the Missouri, a tributary of the Mississippi.
• Confluence — the point where two rivers meet. Example: Khartoum, where the Blue and White Nile join.
• Watershed or drainage basin — the whole area of land that drains into a particular river or lake.

Lines on the map

• Latitude — angular distance north or south of the equator (0°), measured in degrees up to 90° at each pole.
• Longitude — angular distance east or west of the Prime Meridian (0°), which runs through Greenwich in London, up to 180°.
• Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn — the lines at about 23.5°N and 23.5°S; the limits of the zone where the sun can appear directly overhead.
• Arctic and Antarctic Circles — at about 66.5°N and 66.5°S; poleward of these, there is at least one day a year of 24-hour daylight and one of 24-hour darkness.
• Antipode — the point on the exact opposite side of the Earth from a given location.