Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Aquanaut
/ˈækwənɔːt/noun
A person who lives and works underwater in a pressurised habitat.
The Greek roots
ναύτης
naútēs
sailor
Literally: “water sailor”
Follow a root:ναύτης6 words
The story of the word
Latin water welded to a Greek sailor, on the pattern already set by argonaut and later copied by astronaut. The word existed in the 19th century for divers and undersea explorers, but it got its present meaning in the 1960s, when the Sealab programme and Cousteau's Conshelf habitats kept crews on the seabed for days at a time. In the strict sense an aquanaut is someone who has spent 24 hours or more at depth under pressure.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → modern coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
astronautcosmonautargonautnauticalnautilus
In a sentence
Astronauts train as aquanauts because saturation habitats break the same way spacecraft do.
Six aquanauts spent ten days in the habitat and came up needing eighteen hours of decompression.