Waters

How to spell waters

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce waters

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does waters mean?

1. nounAn area or expanse of water, especially a sea, river, or lake belonging to a particular region.
2. verbPours or sprinkles water on something, as a person does in the present tense.

Waters in a sentence

• noun

  The fishing boat strayed into foreign waters and was turned back.

• verb

  She waters the vegetable garden before leaving for work.

• noun

  The calm waters of the harbour made the crossing easy.

• verb

  The farmer waters his fields whenever the rain fails to come.

Where does waters come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends directly from the Old English wæter, the everyday term for the clear liquid that fills rivers and seas. It belongs to a large Germanic family, with close cousins in the Dutch water and the German Wasser, and a deeper ancestral root that also gave us 'wet' and, more distantly, the Greek-derived 'hydro' words. Because the word is so old and native, its spelling has stayed remarkably stable across the centuries, keeping the simple wat-er shape rather than picking up any foreign flourishes. The plural form 'waters' appeared early to describe expanses or bodies of the liquid, as in the seas and rivers of a region, while the identical verb form 'waters' simply adds the third-person ending to the act of supplying water. The lack of any silent letters or doubled consonants is exactly why it gives fluent adults almost no trouble.

How the word is built

• water (from Old English wæter: the liquid)
• -s (plural noun / third-person singular verb ending)