Other forms: aquariums, aquaria
An aquarium is the place with huge glass tanks of fish and sharks to visit. Visit the aquarium, the city aquarium, a home aquarium.
The big viewing panels are acrylic rather than glass, because it is lighter, stronger and can be made in vast curved pieces. The word is Latin for a watering place for cattle, borrowed in the 1850s for the new glass tanks. It also names a home fish tank.
1nounaquariumA place with tanks of fish for viewing.
“The children pressed their faces against the glass at the aquarium to watch the sharks.”
aquarium is a place.
The Latin is of water. An aquarium is simply a house of water, with fish swimming past the glass.
hooks ontowater
Latin aquarium means a watering place, from aqua, water. It was taken up in the 1850s for glass fish tanks.
Latin
aquārius
English, today
aquarium
Built from
Borrowed from Latin aquārius. Borrowed from Latin aquārium, neuter of aquārius (“of or pertaining to water”), from aqua arium. a doublet of ewer; see also Aquarius. Also claimed to be coined by Philip Henry Gosse, as a aquatic and vivarium.{{cite-web|en|title=World's first aquarium|work=London
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA