Divers

How to spell divers

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce divers

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does divers mean?

1. nounMore than one person who swims or works underwater, especially with breathing equipment.

Divers in a sentence

• The divers surfaced slowly after inspecting the sunken hull.

• Commercial divers check the offshore pipeline every spring.

Where does divers come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This single spelling sits on top of two separate stories. The everyday sense, the plural of 'diver', is built from the native Old English verb 'dyfan' meaning to plunge or sink under water, to which English added the agent ending '-er' and then the plural '-s'. The older, now bookish sense meaning 'several' or 'sundry' comes instead from Latin 'diversus', literally 'turned in different directions', which is the past participle of 'divertere', from 'dis-' (apart) and 'vertere' (to turn). English borrowed this adjective through Old French 'divers' around the year 1300, when it simply meant 'various'. Over time the spelling 'diverse' split off to carry the modern 'varied' meaning, while the shorter 'divers' lingered in legal and literary phrasing such as 'divers sums' or 'on divers occasions'. The shared Latin root is exactly why writers still hesitate between 'divers' and 'diverse', the latter keeping a final '-e' that this word drops.

How the word is built

• For the swimmer sense: dive (Old English)
• -er (agent, 'one who does')
• -s (plural). For the archaic sense: from Latin diversus 'turned different ways', no internal English affixes.