Aquaculture

How to spell aquaculture

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce aquaculture

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aquaculture mean?

1. nounThe farming of fish, shellfish, or aquatic plants under controlled conditions.

Aquaculture in a sentence

• The coastal region depends on aquaculture for most of its salmon supply.

• New regulations govern how aquaculture pens are spaced along the shoreline.

Where does aquaculture come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a modern compound built from two Latin pieces: aqua, meaning 'water', and cultura, meaning 'cultivation' or 'tending', the same root that gives us 'agriculture' and 'culture' itself. The word was coined in the late nineteenth century as scientists and farmers began deliberately raising fish, shellfish, and water plants rather than simply harvesting them from the wild. It models itself directly on the much older 'agriculture', swapping the Latin ager 'field' for aqua 'water', so the structure tells you plainly that it means 'farming of the water'. Because the joining vowel is the Latin 'a' of aqua and not an 'e', the spelling trap sits right in the middle: it is 'aqua' then 'culture', never 'aqui-' or 'aque-'. The word stayed rare until the twentieth century, when commercial fish and seafood farming made it an everyday term in food, science, and trade.

How the word is built

• aqua- (water)
• cultura (cultivation, tending)
• -ure (noun-forming suffix)