Meremaiden

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An imaginary sea creature having the upper body of a woman and the tail of a fish
2. A legendary being of the ocean, shaped like a woman from the waist up and ending in a fish tail
3. In folklore, a sea nymph with a human female torso joined to a scaly, finned fish tail

Etymology: Meremaiden is an older, less common spelling of "mermaid," built from two native English elements. "Mere" was an Old English word for a lake or the sea, and "maiden" meant a young woman. Put together, the compound described a sea-woman, and the same pairing produced "mermaid" as the spelling settled over the Middle English period. The "-en" ending in this form is a spelling variant rather than a separate grammatical element. The "mere" in these words is a cognate of Latin "mare," meaning sea. The two words did not pass from one language to the other. They descend separately from a shared ancient root, so English has its own sea-word that happens to match the Latin one. Old English "mere" also survives in place names such as Windermere and in the modern word "mere," meaning a shallow lake.