Aft

How to spell aft

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce aft

What does aft mean?

1. adverbAt, near, or toward the stern or rear of a ship or aircraft.

Aft in a sentence

• The crew stowed the heavy gear aft to balance the boat.

• Passengers in the cheaper cabins were berthed well aft.

Where does aft come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a genuinely old native English word, descending from the Old English æftan, which meant 'from behind' or 'in the rear'. That word belongs to a family of Germanic terms describing position behind something, and it is closely related to the everyday word 'after', which started life as the comparative form meaning 'further back'. Over the centuries 'aft' narrowed from a general sense of 'behind' into a specialised seafaring term for the back, or stern, of a ship, and that nautical use was firmly established by the seventeenth century. Because it is so short and the spelling matches the way it sounds, the chief surprise is that such a tiny modern sailing word is one of the oldest pieces of vocabulary English has kept. Sailors still pair it with its opposite 'fore', as in the phrase 'fore and aft', meaning from one end of the vessel to the other.

How the word is built

• aft (a single root from Old English æftan: from behind, in the rear); related to the comparative form 'after'