Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of, relating to, or characteristic of ships, shipping, sailors, or navigation on a body of water.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Pertaining to ships, seamen, or navigation: as, nautical skill. Abbreviated nautical
  • Synonyms Marine, Naval, etc. See maritime.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to seamen, to the art of navigation, or to ships.
  • adjective See under Almanac.
  • adjective the length in nautical miles of the rhumb line joining any two places on the earth's surface.
  • adjective See under Mile.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Relating to or involving ships or shipping or navigation or seamen.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective relating to or involving ships or shipping or navigation or seamen

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Latin nauticus, from Greek nautikos, from nautēs, sailor, from naus, ship; see nāu- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin nauticus ("of or relating to sailors")

Support

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Examples

  • [NYT] "By the way, before Cashill hit on his theory, I noted some eerie similarities between Dreams of My Father and the Horatio Hornblower novels of C.S. Forester, which also contain nautical references and are written on a high school level, but I gave up my investigation when I realized that Forrester died in 1966 and probably could not have written Obama's book."

    Random: Bark Worse Than Her Bite - Swampland - TIME.com 2008

  • Let us not judge Ashbery too quickly … I do find his taste in nautical nonsense quite creative, which leads me to believe there is a enough of a screw loose to warrant further investigation.

    john ashbery | the serious doll « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2007

  • Whilst we're in nautical mode, here's brave and how about this for actually having a dream and then living it?

    Living the dream 2006

  • Whilst we're in nautical mode, here's brave and how about this for actually having a dream and then living it?

    54 entries from September 2006 2006

  • Whilst we're in nautical mode, here's brave and how about this for actually having a dream and then living it?

    Living the dream 2006

  • And whereas the cognitive tasks inherent in nautical, geographic, and ethnographic work demanded that one use his rational faculties, trips to Cathay required only that one possess a lively imagination.

    The Romance of China: Excursions to China in U.S. Culture: 1776-1876 2005

  • When the time is up, the number of “knots” fed out are counted to determine speed, thus the term for nautical miles per hour.

    A Furnace Afloat JOE JACKSON 2003

  • I dressed myself in nautical rig, and went on deck to see all that I could.

    The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton William Henry Burton Wilkins 1897

  • The orders transmitted to them (in nautical phrase) are amusingthey are playing an ugly tune, or a pretty one badly "Bid those follows take a reef in" or they suddenly stop "Ask those fellows why they have hove to," says the captain to the steward,

    Extracts from a Lady's Log-Book, 1832

  • People create ship designs for the game Pirates of the Burning Sea, researching in nautical museums, because they love to do it — some of them don’t even play the game; they just like to make ships.

    Archive 2009-02-01 Rebecca Tushnet 2009

Comments

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  • In case Wordnik is never fixed (which seems more likely every month), see

                    http://www.wordnik.com/tags/nautical

    for the complete list of words tagged “nautical”.

    September 29, 2011

  • I wouldn't have expected quite so much beefcake in the visuals for this word.

    September 29, 2011

  • I'm a bit disturbed by the iron maiden.

    September 29, 2011

  • sionnach: It reminds me of Smithers’ assertion that “women and seamen don't mix.”

    September 30, 2011