Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Nautical
/ˈnɔːtɪkəl/adjective
Having to do with ships, sailors or navigation at sea.
The Greek roots
ναυτικός
nautikós
of ships and sailors
Literally: “belonging to the sailors”
Follow a root:ναυτικός1 word
The story of the word
Thucydides calls the Athenian fleet τὸ ναυτικόν, the neuter of this adjective doing duty as a noun for sea power itself. Behind it sits ναῦς, ship, the same noun that gives nausea, which is literally seasickness, and the astronaut, a sailor among stars. English took nautical from Latin in the 1550s, at the point when Atlantic voyages were making the vocabulary useful.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1550s
Same family
nauseaastronautaeronauticsargonaut
In a sentence
Everything in the pub was nautical, down to the rope handles on the doors.