Maritime

How to spell maritime

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce maritime

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does maritime mean?

1. adjectiveConnected with the sea, especially in relation to shipping, navigation, or coastal regions.

Maritime in a sentence

• The company specialises in maritime law and shipping disputes.

• The coastal town has a long maritime history of fishing and trade.

Where does maritime come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin maritimus, meaning 'of the sea', which was built on mare, the ordinary Latin word for 'sea'. The same root sits behind 'marine', 'mariner', and even 'marina', and it explains the spelling: the middle is mari-, echoing mare, not the unrelated 'merry' or 'marry'. English took the word in during the 1500s, partly through French maritime, to describe anything connected with the sea, ships, and coastal trade. Over time it broadened from purely nautical matters to whole bodies of law, climates, and regions defined by their closeness to the ocean. The quiet trap for writers is the unstressed middle vowel and the final '-time', which is spelled like the word 'time' even though it has nothing to do with clocks.

How the word is built

• marit- (from Latin mare: sea)
• -ime (adjectival ending)