Sonars

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A device that uses sound waves to detect objects underwater and determine their distance and composition
2. An electronic system that emits sound pulses and analyzes echoes to map the seafloor or locate submerged items
3. A technology employed in naval and oceanographic applications for sensing or navigating through underwater environments

Etymology: "Sonars" is simply the plural of "sonar," so its history is the history of the acronym it came from. SONAR stands for SOund Navigation And Ranging, a name coined during the Second World War, when the technology was developed by the Allied navies to detect submarines by listening for the echoes of sound pulses bounced off them. Over time, the capitalized acronym was gradually worn down into an ordinary lowercase word, a process called anacronymy, in which a letter-by-letter abbreviation becomes a common noun in its own right. Once that happened, English speakers could treat it like any other noun and pluralize it in the usual way, which is how "sonars" came to refer to multiple systems of this kind.

Synonyms: echo sounders, sonic detectors, acoustic sensors