continental shelf

1. 1.

   the relatively shallow (up to 200 meters) seabed surrounding a continent

   Broaderocean floor

Questions about continental shelf

What does continental shelf mean?

continental shelf means "the relatively shallow (up to 200 meters) seabed surrounding a continent".

Is continental shelf a common word?

continental shelf is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.