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The Dead Sea (Arabic: البحر الميت‎  al-Baḥr al-Mayyit (help·info), Hebrew: יָם הַ‏‏מֶּ‏‏לַ‏ח, Yām HaMélaḥ, "Sea of Salt", also Hebrew: יָם הַ‏‏מָּוֶת, Yām HaMā́weṯ, "The Sea of Death"), also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. Its surface and shores are 423 metres (1,388 ft) below sea level, Earth's lowest elevation on land. The Dead Sea is 377 m (1,237 ft) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. With 33.7% salinity, it is also one of the world's saltiest bodies of water, though Lake Assal (Djibouti), Garabogazköl and some hypersaline lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica (such as Don Juan Pond) have reported higher salinities. It is 8.6 times saltier than the ocean. This salinity makes for a harsh environment in which animals cannot flourish, hence its name. The Dead Sea is 55 kilometres (34 mi) long and 18 kilometres (11 mi) wide at its widest point. It lies in the Jordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.

A sea is a large body of saline water that may be connected with an ocean or may be a large saline lake that, like the Caspian Sea, lacks a natural outlet. Sometimes the terms sea and ocean are used synonymously.

Frozen salt water is transformed into "sea ice"; this occurs below the freezing point of pure water—at about −1.8 °C (28.8 °F).