Northwest Passage
Speech parts
1. Northwest Passage - Noun
2. Northwest Passage - Proper noun
Meaning
a water route between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean along the northern coast of North America; Europeans since the 16th century had searched for a short route to the Far East before it was successfully traversed by Roald Amundsen (1903-1906)
Source: WordNetSynonyms
Examples
To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men To find there but the road back home again.
Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea Tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage And make a northwest passage to the sea.
I am convinced, Yorick, continued my father, half reading and half discoursing, that there is a Northwest Passage to the intellectual world; and that the soul of man has shorter ways of going to work, in furnishing itself with knowledge and instruction, than we generally take with it.
Remember, the Arctic didn't have any ice. And the Northwest Passage was wide open. They were raising grapes in Scotland for God sakes, had a huge winery. Iceland was a farming community. As some of the glaciers retreated they found villages that were covered with ice.
In the 19th Century people were looking for the Northwest Passage. Ships were lost and brave people were killed, but that doesn't mean we never went back to that part of the world again, and I consider it the same in space exploration.
1616 with Baffin: The following year (1616), the Muscovy Company again hired Bylot to continue to search for the Northwest Passage.