a. and sb. Also (4 athlant), 7 athlanticke, atlanticke, 7–8 -ick. [ad. L. Atlanticus, a. Gr. Ἀτλαντικός, f. Ἀτλαντ- see ATLAS sb.1 and -IC.] A. adj.
1. Of or pertaining to Mount Atlas in Libya, on which the heavens were fabled to rest. Hence applied to the sea near the western shore of Africa, and afterwards extended to the whole ocean lying between Europe and Africa on the east and America on the west.
1601. Holland, Pliny, I. 51. This river [Guadiana] … falleth into the Spanish Atlantick Ocean.
1626. Cockeram, Athlanticke Sea, is the Mediterranean, or a part thereof.
1732. Lediard, Sethos, II. 4. The Phœnicians … pass’d … into the Hesperian or Atlantick ocean.
1878. Huxley, Physiogr., 178. The southern part of the Atlantic basin.
b. fig. Far-reaching, distant; transf. in U.S.: Eastern.
1650. H. More, Enthus. Tri., etc. (1656), 112. Which no man were able to smell out, unlesse his nose were as Atlantick as your rauming and reaching fancy.
1790. Burke, Fr. Rev., Wks. V. 430. Mr. Bailly will sooner thaw the eternal ice of his atlantick regions, than restore the central heat to Paris.
1800. Weems, Washington (1877), 163. Northern and southern—atlantic and western.
† 2. = ATLANTEAN. Obs.
1631. Brathwait, Whimzies, 139. His Atlanticke shoulders are his supporters.
1652. L. S., People’s Liberty, vi. 11. Neither can one man … be so Atlantick, as to bear upon his shoulders the government of the Universe.
† 3. Of the nature or size of an atlas; atlas-like.
1768. Johnson, in Boswell (1831), II. 539. The maps … fill two Atlantic folios.
B. sb. The Atlantic ocean; also fig. [For the 14th c. athlante, cf. F. atlante, Atlas, also inhabitant of the mythic Atlantis (an island placed by the Greeks in the far West).]
1387. Trevisa, Higden, Rolls Ser. I. 53. Þe see of occean of athlant [oceanus Atlanticus].
a. 1711. Ken, Hymnotheo, Wks. 1721, III. 331. Down on the Earth it in Atlanticks rain’d.
1865. Masson, Rec. Brit. Philos., iv. 388. ‘Feelings’ or ‘phænomena of feeling’ is an indiscriminate Atlantic of a phrase.
