(), from
Helsingborg,
Sweden A sound is often formed by the seas flooding a
river valley. This produces a long inlet where the sloping valley hillsides descend to sea-level and continue beneath the water to form a sloping sea floor. These sounds are more appropriately called
rias. The
Marlborough Sounds in New Zealand are examples of this type of formation. Sometimes a sound is produced by a
glacier carving out a valley on a coast then receding, or the sea invading a glacier valley. The glacier produces a sound that often has steep, near vertical sides that extend deep underwater. The sea floor is often flat and deeper at the landward end than the seaward end, due to glacial
moraine deposits. This type of sound is more properly termed a
fjord (or fiord). The sounds in
Fiordland, New Zealand, have been formed this way. A sound generally connotes a protected anchorage. It can be part of most large islands. In the more general northern European usage, a sound is a
strait or the narrowest part of a strait. In
Scandinavia and around the
Baltic Sea, there are more than a hundred
straits named
Sund, mostly named for the island they separate from the continent or a larger island. In contrast,
the Sound is the common international short name for Øresund, the narrow stretch of water that separates
Denmark and
Sweden, and is the main waterway between the Baltic Sea and the
North Sea. It is also a colloquial short name, among others, for
Plymouth Sound,
England. In areas explored by the British in the late 18th century, particularly the northwest coast of North America, the term "sound" was applied to inlets containing large islands, such as
Howe Sound in
British Columbia and
Puget Sound in the U.S. state of
Washington. It was also applied to bodies of open water not fully open to the ocean, such as
Caamaño Sound or
Queen Charlotte Sound in Canada; or broadenings or mergings at the openings of inlets, like
Cross Sound in Alaska and
Fitz Hugh Sound in British Columbia. in the
New York metropolitan area, seen from space at night Along the east coast and
Gulf Coast of the United States, a number of bodies of water that separate islands from the mainland are called "sounds".
Long Island Sound separates
Long Island from the eastern shores of
the Bronx,
Westchester County, and southern
Connecticut. Similarly, in
North Carolina, a number of large
lagoons lie between the mainland and its barrier beaches, the
Outer Banks. These include
Pamlico Sound,
Albemarle Sound,
Bogue Sound, and several others. The
Mississippi Sound separates the
Gulf of Mexico from the mainland, along much of the gulf coasts of
Alabama and
Mississippi. ==Etymology==