Plate Tectonics Word Search Printable

Plate tectonics vocabulary with an answer key: boundaries, the plates by name, landforms, continental drift and what moves the plates.

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Plate Tectonics Word Search

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0 of 16 words found

HHWIMOONAEEICTS

HMSAAANREEREXWL

ROULRFAULTERTEA

IUBTGLTRENCHAGB

SNDLITHOSPHEREO

HTUGNIRARITLMNV

ZACOLLISIONVAEL

YITECTONICAOLRL

ZNIORNDMANTLEES

JTOLIELONDOCBYC

IVNLDOLMAGMAIDO

EGMBGHXTNOTNIRO

RXPSEPSMYSHOATY

OTQQEARTHQUAKEZ

AOGUCONVERGENTO

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

ConvergentCONVERGENT
SubductionSUBDUCTION
CollisionCOLLISION
TrenchTRENCH
FaultFAULT
MarginMARGIN
SlabSLAB
LithosphereLITHOSPHERE
RidgeRIDGE
MountainMOUNTAIN
VolcanoVOLCANO
WegenerWEGENER
MantleMANTLE
MagmaMAGMA
EarthquakeEARTHQUAKE
TectonicTECTONIC

16 of 24 words from the Plate Tectonics Key Terms list.

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Answer key: Plate Tectonics Word Search

HHWIMOONAEEICTS

HMSAAANREEREXWL

ROULRFAULTERTEA

IUBTGLTRENCHAGB

SNDLITHOSPHEREO

HTUGNIRARITLMNV

ZACOLLISIONVAEL

YITECTONICAOLRL

ZNIORNDMANTLEES

JTOLIELONDOCBYC

IVNLDOLMAGMAIDO

EGMBGHXTNOTNIRO

RXPSEPSMYSHOATY

OTQQEARTHQUAKEZ

AOGUCONVERGENTO

CONVERGENT, SUBDUCTION, COLLISION, TRENCH, FAULT, MARGIN, SLAB, LITHOSPHERE, RIDGE, MOUNTAIN, VOLCANO, WEGENER, MANTLE, MAGMA, EARTHQUAKE, TECTONIC

Next step Type in the terms from your own plate tectonics unit Scramble the same plate words

All 126 words

Plate Boundaries 25

Boundary The line where two plates meet.
Collision The meeting of two continents at a boundary, which pushes up mountains.
Conservative Another word for a transform boundary.
Constructive Another word for a divergent boundary.
Convergent Describes a boundary where plates collide.
Destructive Another word for a convergent boundary.
Divergent Describes a boundary where two plates are moving apart.
Extensional Describes tectonics that pull the lithosphere apart.
Fault A break in rock along which the two sides have moved.
Graben A sunken block of crust bordered by parallel faults.
Margin The edge of a plate or of a continent.
Passive Describes a continental margin where no plate boundary is at work.
Plate A large, rigid piece of the lithosphere that moves slowly over the mantle.
Rift A long strip where the lithosphere is pulling apart.
Slab The part of a sinking plate that bends down and descends into the mantle.
Slide To move smoothly past, as two plates do at a transform boundary.
Spread What the seafloor does at a mid-ocean ridge as new crust forms and moves away.
Strike-slip Describes a fault whose two sides move sideways past each other.
Subduction The sinking of the heavier plate beneath another and down into the mantle.
Suture The seam along a major fault zone where separate blocks of crust have joined.
Thrust With "fault", a break where older rock has been shoved up over younger rock.
Transform Describes a boundary where plates slide past each other, mostly sideways.
Trench A long, narrow, deep dip in the ocean floor.
Triple junction The spot where three plates, and so three boundaries, come together.
Zone With "subduction", the region where one plate goes down under another.

Show all 126 words (101 more)

Tectonic Plates by Name 24

African A major plate that carries most of its continent and the ocean floor to the west and south.
Antarctic The plate that carries the continent around the South Pole.
Arabian A minor plate that has moved north and run into the Eurasian plate.
Australian A major plate that long ago was joined to India and Antarctica in Gondwana.
Caribbean A mostly oceanic plate under Central America and the sea north of South America.
Cocos A young oceanic plate beneath the Pacific, west of Central America.
Craton A piece of continental lithosphere that is very old and has stayed stable.
Crust The top layer of every plate, of an oceanic or a continental kind.
Eurasian The plate that carries most of Europe and Asia.
Farallon The ancient plate that broke into the Cocos and Nazca plates.
Indian The plate that split from Gondwana 100 million years ago and headed north.
Juan de Fuca A small oceanic plate going down beneath the western side of North America.
Lithosphere The planet's stiff outer shell, which is broken into plates.
Major Describes the seven or eight largest plates.
Microplate A very small tectonic plate, such as the Juan de Fuca.
Minor Describes the many smaller plates.
Nazca An oceanic plate off South America whose sinking is largely behind the rise of the Andes.
North American The second largest plate, which also holds Cuba and part of Iceland.
Pacific The largest plate, lying beneath the ocean of the same name.
Philippine A plate of oceanic lithosphere under the sea east of the islands it is named for.
Scotia A minor plate at the edge of the South Atlantic and the Southern Ocean.
Somali A minor plate that is splitting off from the African plate along the East African Rift.
South American A major plate that meets the African plate at the southern Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Terrane A fragment of crust that formed on one plate and became joined to another.

Mountains, Trenches and Ridges 27

Abyssal With "plain", a flat stretch of the deep ocean floor.
Alps The European mountains that formed as the African and Eurasian plates collided.
Andes The longest mountain range on any continent, down the west side of South America.
Atlantic The ocean whose floor has a spreading ridge along it.
Atoll An island shaped like a ring, with coral around a lagoon.
Basin A low area that holds an ocean. The rifting of a continent forms a new one.
Cascadia With "subduction zone", where the Juan de Fuca plate goes under North America.
Everest The highest peak on Earth, in the Himalayas.
Guyot An undersea volcanic mountain with a flat top.
Hawaii The Pacific islands made by one of the best known volcanic hotspots.
Himalayas The range in Asia, with the highest peak on Earth, raised when India met Eurasia.
Iceland An island country that sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Island arc Active volcanoes strung out in a long curved line beside a convergent boundary.
Mariana With "Trench", the deepest oceanic trench, in the western Pacific.
Mountain A high landform. Whole ranges rise where plates collide.
Ocean floor The bottom of the sea, where trenches and spreading ridges are found.
Orogeny The process of mountain building at a convergent plate margin.
Pillow lava Rounded lava shapes that form when lava comes out underwater.
Range Mountains standing in a line and joined by high ground.
Red Sea The body of water whose rift lies between the African and Arabian plates.
Ridge An undersea mountain system where new seafloor forms.
Seamount A large undersea mountain, usually an extinct volcano, that does not reach the surface.
Shelf With "continental", the edge of a continent lying under shallow sea.
Uplift The raising of the surface by tectonic forces.
Valley With "rift", a long lowland made where the lithosphere pulls apart.
Volcanic arc A curved belt of volcanoes that forms above a sinking oceanic plate.
Volcano An opening where magma reaches the surface, common along plate edges.

Continental Drift and Pangaea 26

Bands Strips of ocean floor, parallel to a ridge, that record magnetic flips.
Breakup The splitting apart of a supercontinent.
Cycle With "supercontinent", the repeated gathering and scattering of the continental crust.
Evidence Facts that support an idea, such as matching fossils and magnetic bands.
Fossils Remains of ancient life. Matching ones on separate continents show the lands once joined.
Glossopteris An extinct seed plant whose fossil leaves link the pieces of Gondwana.
Gondwana An ancient southern land whose pieces include South America, Africa and Antarctica.
Hess The American geologist who published theories on seafloor spreading.
Holmes The English geologist who proposed mantle convection in 1931.
Hypothesis An idea to be tested, as continental drift was when first proposed.
Landmass A large body of land. Gondwana and Laurasia were two.
Laurasia The northern one of the two great lands that made up part of Pangaea.
Lystrosaurus An extinct plant eater whose fossils turn up from Antarctica to India and South Africa.
Mechanism The way something works. For moving continents, none was known in 1912.
Mesosaurus An extinct water reptile whose fossils lie in southern Africa and South America.
Paleomagnetism The study of the planet's past magnetic field as recorded in rocks.
Pangaea The supercontinent that came together about 335 million years ago.
Panthalassa The vast superocean that surrounded Pangaea.
Rejected What the idea of moving continents was by many at first, for want of a known cause.
Reversal A flip of the magnetic field in which magnetic north and south change places.
Rodinia A supercontinent far older than Pangaea, which broke up over 600 million years ago.
Supercontinent Most or all of the planet's land joined in a single large mass.
Tethys A prehistoric ocean, the forerunner of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
Tharp The geologist and mapmaker whose 1950s work first charted the floor of the Atlantic.
Theory An explanation backed by evidence. Plate tectonics is one.
Wegener The scientist who proposed in 1912 that the continents slowly move.

What Moves the Plates 24

Asthenosphere The ductile layer of the upper mantle that the rigid plates float across.
Centimeters The unit in which a plate's yearly movement is measured.
Convection The slow creeping circulation of the solid mantle.
Conveyor belt What the making of crust at ridges and its loss at trenches is compared to.
Cooling Getting colder, which makes new crust denser as it moves away from the ridge.
Creep Slow movement along a fault with no notable earthquake.
Current A steady flow. Convection ones in the mantle help to move the plates.
Dive To plunge. The heavier plate does it beneath the other.
Earthquake A shaking of the ground, most common along plate boundaries.
Float What the rigid plates do across the asthenosphere.
Gravity The force that drags a cold, dense slab down into the mantle.
Heat The energy from inside the planet that keeps the mantle moving.
Magma Molten rock that rises between separating plates.
Mantle The layer of hot rock beneath the crust, into which sinking plates descend.
Motion Movement. Plates typically manage between zero and 10 cm of it a year.
Rate How fast something happens. Subduction's is measured in centimeters per year.
Recycle To use again. Subduction does this to oceanic lithosphere, returning it to the mantle.
Ridge push A smaller driving force, from lithosphere sliding down off a raised mid-ocean ridge.
Rupture A sudden break along a fault, which releases stored energy.
Sink To go down, as cold, dense oceanic crust does at a subduction zone.
Slab pull The downward force of a cold, dense plate sinking at a trench; the strongest driver.
Stress The force that builds up in the rocks on opposite sides of a fault.
Tectonic Describes the plates, and the forces that build and shape the crust.
Upwelling The rising of mantle material beneath separating plates.

How this list was compiled: Own work: the word list and every clue were written for this page. The facts in the clues were checked on 2026-10-09 against English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), among them the articles on plate tectonics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics), the list of tectonic plates (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plates), the convergent boundary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_boundary), the divergent boundary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_boundary), the transform fault (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transform_fault), subduction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subduction), slab pull (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_pull), ridge push (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridge_push), continental drift (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift) and Pangaea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangaea). Licence: own work

How it works

This plate tectonics word search printable draws 16 of 24 key terms, such as Plate, Boundary, Subduction, Rift, Fault, Trench and Convection. For crust, mantle and core, print the layers of the Earth word search.

Read the full guide

Boundaries and the plates by name

Under Start from a list, Plate Boundaries has 25 words, from Convergent, Divergent and Transform to Suture and Triple junction. Tectonic Plates by Name has 24, with Pacific, Nazca, Cocos, Eurasian and Juan de Fuca.

Landforms, drift and motion

Mountains, Trenches and Ridges has 27 words, among them Himalayas, Andes, Mariana and Seamount. Continental Drift and Pangaea has 26, from Wegener and Gondwana to the fossils Glossopteris, Mesosaurus and Lystrosaurus. What Moves the Plates has 24, with Slab pull and Ridge push.

Thirteen entries have a space or a hyphen and hide closed up: JUANDEFUCA, SLABPULL, REDSEA.
Drift is not an entry: Rift reads inside it, and a grid would show Rift twice.

Questions and answers

What are the three types of plate boundaries?

Convergent, where plates collide and one may sink beneath the other; divergent, where plates move apart and new crust forms; and transform, where plates slide past each other, mostly sideways.

What makes tectonic plates move?

Mostly slab pull: the weight of a cold, dense plate sinking into the mantle at a trench drags the rest of the plate along. Ridge push adds only 5 to 10 percent. Beneath both, the solid mantle circulates slowly by convection.

How fast do tectonic plates move?

Typically between zero and 10 centimeters a year, measured one plate against another. Where one plate sinks beneath another, the two can close at up to 11 centimeters a year.

What was Pangaea?

A supercontinent that came together about 335 million years ago and started splitting up some 175 million years ago. The superocean Panthalassa surrounded it, and no supercontinent has existed since.

Does the plate tectonics word search come with an answer key?

Yes, on page 2 of the printout, Letter or A4, with every word ringed. Tick Show clues, not words, and Slab prints as "The part of a sinking plate that bends down and descends into the mantle."

All 126 words

Plate Boundaries 25

Tectonic Plates by Name 24

Mountains, Trenches and Ridges 27

Continental Drift and Pangaea 26

What Moves the Plates 24

How it works

Boundaries and the plates by name

Landforms, drift and motion

Questions and answers

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