nautilus

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin nautilus,^[2][3][4][5] which in Pliny named the paper nautilus,^[2][6] or a kind of marine snail,^[3][4] from Ancient Greek ναυτίλος (nautílos, “sailor, seaman; paper nautilus”),^[2][7][4] from ναύτης (naútēs, “sailor”) with a noun suffix,^[2][8] from ναῦς (naûs, “ship”),^[3][4][9] from Proto-Indo-European *nau- (“boat”).^[3][5] The name was given because the webbed arms of the paper nautilus were thought to serve it as sails,^[10][7] a belief that lasted from Aristotle into the 19th century.^[3] The OED compares Italian nautilo, recorded before 1498, and Middle French nautile, recorded in 1562 in a French translation of Pliny.^[2] The Greek noun is related to nautical and navy.^[4][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A cephalopod of the genus Nautilus: 1601, in Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

The Latin and Greek name belonged to the paper nautilus, the "sailor" whose arms were believed to act as sails;^[2][10] in English it was applied first to the chambered cephalopods of the genus Nautilus (1601) and, from 1733, to the paper nautilus as well.^[2] Pope's Essay on Man (1733) gave the old belief its best-known form: "Learn of the little nautilus to sail, / Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale", lines that Johnson quoted for the word in 1755.^[2][3][11] The name of the sailing animal was later given to vessels: Robert Fulton's diving boat (1800) and the submarine in Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea were called Nautilus,^[12] and in 1875 a kind of closed diving bell was called a nautilus.^[2][13] Since 1974 Nautilus has also been a trade name for a weight-training machine.^[2]

Timeline

• 1601 – a cephalopod of the genus Nautilus, with a chambered spiral shell.^[2][4][6]
• 1733 – the paper nautilus, in Pope's Essay on Man.^[2]
• 1875 – a kind of closed diving bell (now obsolete).^[2]
• 1974 – Nautilus, a trade name for a weight-training machine.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. Any of several cephalopods of the genus Nautilus, of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, that live in the outer chamber of a coiled, chambered shell lined with mother-of-pearl; the pearly nautilus.^{[14][6][2][15]}
2. The paper nautilus, an argonaut.^[14][2][15]
3. Nautilus: a trade name for a weight-training machine in which the user moves padded bars attached to weights by pulleys.^[2]

Word family

• nautiloid
• paper nautilus
• pearly nautilus

Related words

• nautical
• navy
• naval
• argonaut
• astronaut

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
9. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
14. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
15. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press