Marina

How to spell marina

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce marina

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does marina mean?

1. nounA sheltered harbour with moorings and services for yachts and small pleasure boats.

Marina in a sentence

• They moored the yacht at the marina before dinner.

• The new marina has space for two hundred boats and a fuel dock.

Where does marina come from?

Language of origin: Italian

Marina comes from the Italian and Spanish word marina, the feminine form of marino, meaning 'belonging to the sea'. The ultimate root is the Latin adjective marinus, built on mare, the plain Latin word for 'sea', which also gives English 'marine', 'maritime', and 'mariner'. In Italian and Spanish marina long meant the seashore or coastline generally, and the more specific modern sense, a sheltered dock with moorings and facilities for pleasure boats, took hold in twentieth-century English, especially in American usage from the 1920s onward. The single medial 'r' and the bare '-ina' ending are easier to remember once you connect the word to 'marine': both trace straight back to mare, the sea. Marina also survives as a personal name with the same watery origin.

How the word is built

• marin- (from Latin marinus: of the sea, from mare 'sea')
• -a (feminine noun ending)