seaworthy

UK/ˈsiːwɜːði/US/ˈsiːwɝði/

adjectiveB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,929 of 15,258leans written

Seaworthy means fit and safe to go to sea. A seaworthy vessel, barely seaworthy, declared seaworthy.

It is a legal standard rather than an opinion, and a shipowner warrants seaworthiness in every contract of carriage, which is why an unseaworthy ship voids the insurance. It covers the crew and the equipment as well as the hull.

Definitions of seaworthy

1adjectiveseaworthyFit and safe to go to sea.B2+
“The old fishing boat was no longer seaworthy, so they left it rotting in the harbour.”

seaworthy is a quality.

Where it comes from

Proto-Germanic
*saiwiz
Proto-West Germanic
*saiwi — body of water
Old English
sǣ
Middle English
see
English
sea
English, today
seaworthy

From sea + -worthy. sea Middle English see, from Old English sǣ, from Proto-West Germanic saiwi (“body of water”), from Proto-Germanic saiwiz, itself either:

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sea & Sailing

Practise this word

seaworthy in the wild

Like those made in traditional times, they have proved eminently seaworthy.
Pacific Northwest canoes
Some replicas may not even be seaworthy, but built for other educational or entertainment purposes.
Ship replica
Most left with improvised rafts, which were often not seaworthy, and some even hijacked a ferry.
Balseros (film)
USS Shamrock was a large seaworthy steamer with powerful guns, acquired by the Union Navy during the American Civil War.
USS Shamrock
If the four ships had been finished they would have been the most seaworthy monitors in the US Navy.
Kalamazoo-class monitor

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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