seafaring
nounEtymology From sea + faring.
1
The act, process, or practice of travelling the seas, such as by sailing or steaming.
2
The work or calling of a seafarer, especially a sailor.
seafaring
adjEtymology From Middle English safarinde, see farand, se farinde, equivalent to sea + faring (“travelling; journeying; going”). Compare Old English sǣ-līþende (“seafaring”). Cognate with Dutch zeevarend (“seafaring”), German Low German seefahrend (“seafaring”), German seefahrend (“seafaring”), Danish søfarende (“seafaring”), Swedish sjöfarande (“seafaring”).
1
Living one's life at sea.
- There was absolutely nothing about the body to suggest that it might possibly in life have known a maritime experience. It was the body of a low type of man or a high type of beast. In neither instance would it have been of a seafaring race. Therefore I deduced that it was native to Caprona--that it lived inland, and that it had fallen or been hurled from the cliffs above.1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter IV, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC:
2
Fit to travel on the sea; seagoing.
- A rowing boat is not a seafaring craft.
- Derived terms
- semiseafaring, unseafaring