sargasson.

1598 W. Phillip tr. J. H. van Linschoten Disc. Voy. E. & W. Indies i. xcv. 176/1 Then wee entred into the sea, called Sergasso, which is all couered with hearbes... The hearbe is like Samper, but yellow of colour... The Portingalles call it Sargasso, because it is like the herbes that groweth in their welles in Portingall, called Sargasso.

1634 T. Herbert Relation Some Yeares Trauaile 19 About the Cape Sargassoes and Trumbaes floate fifty leagues into the Seas.

1687 New Atlantis i. 169 The watry Field, Spread with Sargossa.

1688–9 H. Sloane Voy. Eng. 26 Mar. in Voy. Jamaica (1725) II. 342 We saw much Saragossa a floating here, called by the Seamen Gulf-weed.

1772 J. Adams tr. A. de Ulloa Voy. S. Amer. (ed. 3) II. 337 The sea was covered with a kind of weed called Sargasso, which pickled, is by many thought equal to Samphire.

1835–6 Todd's Cycl. Anat. & Physiol. I. 520/1 Floating Sargasso or gulf-weed of the Equator.

1855 M. F. Maury Physical Geogr. Sea ii. §132 There is in each ocean a Sargasso into which all drift matter..finds its way.

1871 C. Kingsley At Last I. i. 13 The Sargassos..are a genus of themselves and by themselves.

1934 D. Thomas 18 Poems 12 The dry Sargasso of the tomb Gives up its dead to such a working sea.

1968 A. C. Clarke 2001: Space Odyssey xlii. 206 It had swept him across the Galaxy, and dumped him..in this celestial Sargasso.

1976 Listener 12 Feb. 182/3 I started the week with a careful schedule and ended in bed with 'flu, lost in a Sargasso of phone-ins, pop, news, avant-garde operas and the reminiscences of David Niven.

1977 Mystery Writers' Choice 62 I waited..adrift in a sargasso of conflicting feelings.

1855 C. Kingsley Westward Ho! iii All around floated the sargasso beds, clogging her bows.

1855 M. F. Maury Physical Geogr. Sea (1859) §13 Midway the Atlantic, in the triangular space between the Azores, Canaries, and the Cape de Verd Islands, is the Sargasso Sea.

1961 P. Solomon in B. E. Flaherty Psychophysiol. Aspects Space Flight iii. 275 Deprived of sensory input, the mind is cut adrift and regresses inexorably into that Sargasso Sea of the primary process, where time disappears,..where vivid, multicolored hallucinations swirl and befuddle the senses.

1966 C. H. Hapgood Maps of Anc. Sea Kings ii. 25 We found ourselves in a veritable Sargasso Sea of uncertainties.

1966 ‘J. Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (title) The wide Sargasso Sea.

1979 ‘P. O'Connor’ Into Strong City i. xix. 68 I was experiencing a severe London pea-soup fog... I swam through an impenetrable ochre sargasso sea.

1830 Philos. Mag. 2nd Ser. 8 459 In the North Atlantic Ocean, coming from the south, you fall in about the tropic with the Sargasso weeds.

1885 A. Brassey In Trades 168 The patches of sargasso weed that floated past.