Sailor

How to spell sailor

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sailor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sailor mean?

1. nounA person who works aboard a ship or serves in a navy.

Sailor in a sentence

• The experienced sailor secured the ropes before the storm hit.

• Her grandfather served as a sailor in the navy for twenty years.

Where does sailor come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the everyday noun 'sail', which comes from the Old English segl, the broad sheet of cloth that catches the wind to drive a ship. The verb 'to sail' followed naturally, and from the late Middle Ages English began forming an agent noun for the person who works a ship. Earlier forms favoured 'sailer' and 'sailour', and the spelling wobbled for centuries before settling on the Latin-flavoured '-or' ending around the 1600s, which is why the modern word looks like it ends in a borrowed Latin suffix even though its core is solidly Germanic. The choice of '-or' over '-er' is the main spelling trap, since most English agent nouns take '-er'; sailor simply happens to be one of the exceptions. A useful memory hook is that it keeps company with 'tailor', another familiar trade word that ends the same way.

How the word is built

• sail (from Old English segl, a sheet of cloth that catches the wind)
• -or (agent suffix: one who does)