Meerman

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A legendary marine being with the head and torso of a man and the tail of a fish, found in folklore of northern seas
2. An imaginary sea creature from old sailors' tales, combining a human upper body with a scaled fish tail below the waist
3. A mythological ocean dweller, half man and half fish, believed by seafarers in earlier centuries to lurk beneath the waves

Etymology: "Meerman" is a compound of "mere" and "man," and the first element is the surprise. "Mere" here means "sea," not the English word for a pond or lake. It comes from Old English "mere," which meant a lake, pool, or sea, and is related to Latin "mare" and Old High German "mari," all reaching back to an ancient root for the sea. Early English used "mere" in both senses, but the sea sense survived mainly in poetry and in the compound "meerman." The word means a merman, a male sea creature, and in its earliest English recorded uses it was applied to the sea-dwelling figures of folklore. It shows up in Middle English writing and was used in the sense of a sea man or mariner as well as a mythical being, the same way "mermaid" was built from "mere" and "maid."

Synonyms: merman, merfolk