mariner

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English mariner, also marinar, marener and maroner,^[2] borrowed from Anglo-Norman mariner, also marinier,^[3][2][4][5] and Old French marinier, also marenier and maronier,^[3][2][6] from Medieval Latin marīnārius (“sailor”),^[3][4][7][8] from Latin marīnus (“of the sea”),^[3][4][7] from mare (“the sea”),^[4] from Proto-Indo-European *mori- (“body of water”).^[4] The Anglo-Norman noun is recorded from about 1140,^[3] and the Old French one from 1155,^[3] while the noun in Medieval Latin is found from the mid-11th century.^[3] Related formations are Spanish marinero, Portuguese marinheiro and Italian marinaio.^[3] It is a derivative of the same Latin adjective as marine.^[6][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A sailor: about 1300, in the South English Legendary, in the life of St Clement: Marineres us token into heore schipe.^[2][3] Etymonline says the mid-13th century,^[4] Dictionary.com 1250–1300,^[10] the 1989 edition of the OED about 1290,^[11] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged the 14th century.^[7] It is found as a surname from the late 12th century, though it is uncertain whether those records are Anglo-Norman or English.^[3]

Semantic evolution

It is older than sailor in English and was long the more common word.^[4][12] The MED's quotations show it for a seaman, a navigator or a boatman, for a ship's master or owner, and perhaps for a pirate;^[2] the Wycliffite Bible used it for Latin nautae,^[2] and Chaucer has it three times.^[13] Anglo-Norman already had it for a marine soldier and in the phrase for a master mariner,^[5] and the OED records a fighting man on board ship from before 1450 to 1699.^[3][9] Johnson (1755) gave simply "a seaman; a sailor".^[14] In law the word covers anyone employed on a ship.^[3][9][15] Smyth wrote in 1867 that it meant anyone who earns a living at sea, whatever the rank, and that for the old voyagers mariners were able seamen and sailors only ordinary ones.^[16] Coleridge revived the spelling marinere as an archaism in The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere (1798).^[3] Collins now labels the word formal or literary.^[17]

Timeline

• c. 1300 – a sailor.^[3][2]
• before 1450 – a fighting man on board ship (obsolete by 1699).^[3]
• 1798 – the archaic form marinere, revived by Coleridge.^[3]
• 1838 – master mariner, the captain of a merchant ship.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A sailor or seaman; someone who navigates or helps to navigate a ship, now a formal or literary word: Old mariners still talk about that storm.^[17][7][3]
2. (law) Any person employed on a ship.^[3][9][15]
3. A senior Girl Scout specialising in seamanship and handling boats.^[7]
4. Mariner: any of a series of American space probes launched between 1962 and 1971 to study Mars, Venus and interplanetary space.^[17]
5. (obsolete, before 1450–1699) A fighting man on board ship; a marine.^[3][9]

Word family

• master mariner
• marinership
• merchant mariner

Related words

• marine
• maritime
• marina
• submarine
• ultramarine
• aquamarine
• mere
• mermaid

Usage notes

In Tasmania a mariner is a marine snail whose shells are strung as necklaces, recorded by the OED from 1898.^[3] This is a separate word: Morris explained it as a corruption, in the manner of Hobson-Jobson, of the Aboriginal name of the necklaces, which he gives as Merrina,^[18] and the Australian Oxford likewise says it is possibly from a Tasmanian Aboriginal language.^[19]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ a b Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ a b Garner, Bryan A., ed. (2004), Black's Law Dictionary, 8th ed., St. Paul, Minn.: Thomson West
16. ^ Smyth, W. H. (1867), The Sailor's Word-Book: An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, London: Blackie and Son
17. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
18. ^ Morris, Edward E. (1898), Austral English: A Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases and Usages, London: Macmillan
19. ^ Moore, Bruce, ed. (2004), The Australian Oxford Dictionary, 2nd ed., Melbourne: Oxford University Press