Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. One who serves in a navy or works on a ship.
- n. One who travels by water.
- n. A low-crowned straw hat with a flat top and flat brim.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. One who sails; a seaman; a mariner; one of the crew of a ship or vessel.
- n. Synonyms Sailor, Seaman, Mariner. To most landsmen any one who leads a seafaring life is a sailor. Nelson was a great sailor. Technically, sailor applies only to the men before the mast. To a landsman seaman seems a business term for a sailor; technically, seaman includes sailors and petty officers. Mariner is an elevated, poetic, or quaint term for a seaman; shipman is a still older term. The technical use of mariner is now restricted to legal documents. There is no present distinction in name between the men in the navy and those in the merchant marine.
Wiktionary
- n. One who follows the business of navigating ships or other vessels; one who understands the practical management of ships; one of the crew of a vessel; a mariner; a common seaman.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. One who follows the business of navigating ships or other vessels; one who understands the practical management of ships; one of the crew of a vessel; a mariner; a common seaman.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a stiff hat made of straw with a flat crown
- n. a serviceman in the navy
- n. any member of a ship's crew
Etymologies
- From sailer. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“He added, This sailor is a veritable storehouse of information of all kinds, as he reads and retains everything that comes through.”
“They knew that drink -- and drink with a sailor is always excessive -- made them mad, but only mildly mad.”
“And by "sailor" is meant, not the average efficient and hopeless creature who is found to-day in the forecastle of deepwater ships, but the man who will take a fabric compounded of wood and iron and rope and canvas and compel it to obey his will on the surface of the sea.”
“And by "sailor" is meant, not the average inefficient and hopeless creature who is found to-day in the forecastles of deepwater ships, but the man who will take a fabric compounded of wood and iron and rope and canvas and compel it to obey his will on the surface of the sea.”
“_________ I think what is being said is that other countries refer to their sailors in some form of the word "marine" as they do not have a distinct separate branch that differentiates a sailor from a marine as in the US military.”
“On Sunday, China and Japan seemed to be edging past their worst dispute in five years, as Japanese leaders called for "mutually beneficial" ties after China thanked Japan's military for evacuating a sick Chinese sailor from a ship in the Pacific on Saturday.”
“Where some strapping young sailor is game for a little of the old matelotage -- a dash of rum, sodomy and the lash -- we're not going to refrain simply because happenstance finds us in a nation or era with rules against such things.”
“Barring captains and mates of big ships, the small-boat sailor is the real sailor.”
“While he devoted more and more of his time to the plantation itself, she took over the house and its multitudinous affairs; and she took hold firmly, in sailor fashion, revolutionizing the system and discipline.”
“A rainbow sweater, dirty and the worse for wear, clung loosely to his broad shoulders, and a red cotton handkerchief was knotted in sailor fashion about his throat.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sailor’.
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UK Usage - Find US Equivalent
All these terms have a (different) American English equivalent. Wonder if you can identify them?
abridgement (abri..., accoutrement, accoutre, acknowledgement (..., opposite, advert, adaptor, adapter, sticking plaster, advertise, adviser (advisor ..., adze, aesthete and 1196 more...
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Job names
accountant, salesman, actor, galley slave, actress, captain, lumberjack, janitor, judge, policeman, reporter, anchor and 7 more...
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Sophaloaf's list
Favorites!
belle, starfish, photography, buddha, dinosaur, floccinaucinihili..., hypoallergenic, sailor, gorgeous, adhesive, imagination, artichokes and 55 more...
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MIX DES CULTURES
french words & english ones
des mots français & d'autres anglaisà gogo, tchétchène, faciès, déviant, gamin, superette, grigri, diantre, in jeopardy, syncope, primrose, menthe and 92 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
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lauren_inretrospective's list
words I adore....
ethereal, luminiscent, etiquette, surreal, plumage, feathery, vintage, jubilee, rouge, satin, fathom, height and 101 more...
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Trades Featured in R. Campbell's The ...
Hey kids! What do YOU want to be when you grow up?!
Reprint edition, Devon: Latimer Trend & Co., Ltd., 1969. Full original citation (you'd better grab a drink and sit down) is:
...woollen draper, wood monger, wood cutter, wine cooper, woolsted man, wool card maker, wool comber, wool stapler, wire drawer, whalebone-man, whip maker, weaver and 343 more...
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precious
coin, waiflike, zoo, captain, difference, diet, automagical, olive, noanoa, dusk, cookie, monday and 221 more...
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Moon
grapefruit, full, moonshadow, moondance, a display of one'..., waning, new, river, lunar, phase, man in the, apollo and 53 more...
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The Miller's Tale
cheesemonger, fishmonger, mercer, milliner, cobbler, sailor, cooper, tinker, tailor, soldier, spy, jewler and 34 more...
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Poetrie: Shipwreck
The helm's alee, all decks secured,
The sails tight-reefed and lashed.
The sea-anchor strains, the rigging hums,
And the sailor's hopes are dashed.
For with anxious ... -
Luddite's Words
luddite, dilettante, ouroboros, gazebo, iterative, icarus, incidentally, ambrosial, you, i, inasmuch, nevertheless and 24 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for sailor.
reesetee Heehee. Mar 19, 2008
chained_bear "'I do love a jolly sailor,' sang the women.
'Blithe and merry might he be...' A brewer's dray interrupted them... but when they had done with screaming and making gestures at the brewer's men, they sang on
'Sailors they get all the money,
Soldiers they get none but brass.
I do love a jolly sailor,
Soldiers they may kiss my arse.
Oh my little rolling sailor,
Oh my little rolling he,
I do love a jolly sailor,
Soldiers may be damned for me.'
--P. O'Brian, The Yellow Admiral, 234–235 Mar 19, 2008