Seaweed

How to spell seaweed

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce seaweed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does seaweed mean?

1. nounAny of the large algae that grow in the sea or wash up along the shore.

Seaweed in a sentence

• The storm left thick mats of seaweed along the beach.

• She wraps the rice in dried seaweed to make sushi at home.

Where does seaweed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a straightforward English compound, joining 'sea' and 'weed', both of which are very old native words inherited from Old English. 'Sea' descends from the Old English sae, an ordinary Germanic term for a large body of salt water, while 'weed' comes from the Old English weod, meaning a wild or unwanted plant. The combination first appears in writing in the 1570s, originally describing any plant growing in the sea. Calling these marine algae 'weeds' reflects an old habit of labelling any low, wild, spreading plant a weed, even though seaweeds are not true plants at all. Because both halves are plain everyday words, the spelling holds no real surprises beyond remembering the doubled 'e' that bridges the two parts.

How the word is built

• sea (large body of salt water)
• weed (wild plant)