polynya (p&schwa.U'lInj&schwa.). Formerly also polynia.  Pl. polynyas (rarely
||polynyi.). [Russ. poluinya a rotten place in the ice, an open place amidst
ice, f. root of pole, polyana field.] A space of open water in the midst of
ice, esp. in the arctic seas. 
  1853 KANE Grinnell Exp. (1856) 544 It is an annulus, a ring surrounding an
area of open water-the Polynya, or Iceless Sea. 1856 KANE Arct. Expl. I. xx.
244 The stream-holes (stromhols) of the Greenland coast, the polynia of the
Russians. 1870 J. K. LAUGHTON Phys. Geog. iv. 235 Adm. Von Wrangell found open
water-or what is now often called a `Polynia', an open sea. 1894 CAPT. F. G.
JACKSON Thous. Days in Arctic (1899) I. 39 Lay all day in a `polynia'.1957
Sat. Even. Post 8 Dec. 7 From the deck of the A-sub, here surfaced in a
`polynya'-a hole in the ice-pack-crewmen took a close look at the perpetually
frozen Arctic Ocean. 1963 G. L. PICKARD Descriptive Physical Oceanogr. vii.
154 Some of this cap ice melts in the summer... Open water spaces, `polynyas',
may form. 1963 Sunday Tel. 22 Sept. 15 Learning to find holes, or polynias,
was one of the primary tasks of the two British submarines Porpoise and
Grampus. 1971 Nature 1 Jan. 37/2 The present study was undertaken to measure
the actual distribution of CO[2] between the atmosphere and the sea over open
leads and polynyi in the ice-covered Bering Sea. 1974 L. DEIGHTON Spy Story
xix. 206 We found a suitably large polynya-which is the proper name for a
lagoon in the ice-and..the Captain began surfacing procedures.

(Oxford English Dictionary)

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