kraken

/krah"keuhn/, n. (often cap.)

a legendary sea monster causing large whirlpools off the coast of Norway.

[ < Norw]

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▪ legendary sea monster

      a fabulous Scandinavian sea monster perhaps imagined on the basis of chance sightings of giant squids. It appears in literature in a poem of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's juvenilia called “The Kraken.”

Below the thunders of the upper deep,

Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,

His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep

The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee

About his shadowy sides; above him swell

Huge sponges of millenial growth and height;

And far away into the sickly light,

From many a wondrous grot and secret cell

Unnumber'd and enormous polypi

Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.

There hath he lain for ages, and will lie

Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,

Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;

Then once by man and angels to be seen,

In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

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