mare

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The Word of the Day for March 4 is:

mare   \MAHR-ay\   noun, plural maria
     : any of several mostly flat dark areas of considerable 
extent on the surface of the moon or Mars

Example sentence: 
     Looking up at the bright full moon, we saw clearly the 
maria that make up the face of the man in the moon.

Did you know?
     "Mare" didn't officially touch down in English until 1860, 
but the idea that the dark areas of the moon's surface might be 
seas goes back at least to the ancient Greek writer Plutarch. 
Galileo introduced the concept in modern times. He himself never 
used the Latin word "mare" ("sea") to describe these "seas," but 
various writers of 17th-century Latin works did. Today we know 
that the moon is dry and its "seas" are actually old lava flows, 
but we still use "mare" and its plural "maria" to refer to them. 
(The plural "mares" occurs, too, but less frequently.) 
Incidentally, the "mare" that is pronounced MAIR and 
means "female horse" has no connection with Latin or the sea. 
Rather, it is derived from "mearh," the Old English word 
for "horse."