Seaman

How to spell seaman

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce seaman

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does seaman mean?

1. nounA person who works aboard a ship, especially a sailor below officer rank.
2. nounAn enlisted rank in a navy, typically among the most junior grades aboard ship.

Seaman in a sentence

• The experienced seaman knew how to read the changing weather at sea.

• After basic training she was rated as an ordinary seaman in the fleet.

• Every seaman on the cargo vessel completed a safety drill before departure.

• The recruit was promoted from seaman to petty officer within two years.

Where does seaman come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a straightforward native English compound, joining the Old English words 'sae', meaning the ocean or a large body of water, with 'mann', meaning a person or adult male. Both elements are firmly Germanic, descending from the same ancestral roots that gave Dutch 'zeeman' and German 'Seemann', so the word has close cousins right across the North Sea coast. It has been used in English since at least the medieval period to describe a person whose work is sailing or serving aboard a ship. In modern naval usage it also became a formal rank, the lowest enlisted grade in several navies, which is why the word survives in official documents as well as everyday speech. The chief spelling trap is purely aural: 'seaman' sounds identical to 'semen', so the ear is no guide and the writer must remember the visible 'sea' and 'man' inside it.

How the word is built

• sea (the ocean)
• man (adult male, person)