nautical
adjective
Simple meaning
About or involving ships or shipping or navigation or seamen.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
nawtuhkuhlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈnɔtəkəl
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Relating to or involving ships or shipping or navigation or seamen
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: Relating to or involving ships or shipping or navigation or seamen
Used this way, nautical is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use nautical
- “The restaurant had a fun nautical theme with anchors and seashells.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A linear unit of distance used in navigation.
A former British unit of length equivalent to 6,080 feet (1,853.184 meters).
One of an international code of flag signals used between ships.
A nautical unit of length (15 ft).
A unit of length used in navigation.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.