Waterway

How to spell waterway

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce waterway

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does waterway mean?

1. nounA river, canal, or other navigable channel of water used for travel or transport.

Waterway in a sentence

• The barge moved slowly along the busy waterway.

• The city grew up around an inland waterway that linked it to the coast.

Where does waterway come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English compound, built from two of the oldest words in the language. 'Water' descends from the Old English wæter, which traces back to a Proto-Germanic root shared with Dutch water and German Wasser, and ultimately to an ancient Indo-European source meaning the wet element. 'Way' comes from Old English weg, meaning a path, road, or course of travel, and is related to the verb to 'wend' and to the idea of movement. Joined together, the compound describes a route along or made of water, and it appears in English from at least the medieval period. Because both halves are everyday native words, the spelling is transparent and rarely causes trouble; the only thing to remember is that it is written as a single solid word, not as two separate words.

How the word is built

• water (Old English wæter)
• way (Old English weg: path, route)