What do they mean by the Florida Keys?
In everyday, language a key y is a tricky little gadget made to open n or close a lock. Another key may be the master item in a problem, the one that solves the puzzle. Different keys appear on pianos or in stone arches or with telegraph and typesetting instruments and some charts are called keys. Florida was named by the Spanish with their word for flowery. They also gave us a name for the ocean Isles that loop like a necklace from the southern tip of the flower state. Their word for a rocky islet was cayo. We borrowed it and modified it to name the Florida Keys. Our word for the lovely little isles is not related to door keys or piano keys, to telegraph or any other key. Nor is it related to the word quay, meaning a wharf, which is pronounced the same as key. The sea bed dips sharply off the eastern coast of Florida for here the sweeping gulf stream has carved a steep plunge to the ocean abyss. Generations of teeming corals helped to build up the string of keys that reaches l50 miles
