Seawater

How to spell seawater

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce seawater

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does seawater mean?

1. nounThe salt water that makes up the sea and oceans.

Seawater in a sentence

• The metal railings rusted quickly after years of exposure to seawater.

• The desalination plant turns seawater into drinking water.

Where does seawater come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English compound, joining 'sea' and 'water', both of which are among the oldest words in the language. 'Sea' descends from the Old English 'sae', shared with related Germanic forms such as the Dutch 'zee' and the German 'See', all referring to a large body of salt water. 'Water' comes from the Old English 'waeter', a word with deep Germanic and Indo-European roots tied to terms for the liquid itself. The two have been written together as a single descriptive term for the salt water of the ocean for centuries. Because both halves are familiar everyday words, the only real spelling decision is remembering that the modern form is closed up as one word rather than split into two.

How the word is built

• sea (the body of salt water)
• water (liquid)