sea captain
6
3.2
- noun
- /siː ˈkæptɪn/
:
capitán de mar
- After years of training, she finally became a sea captain of her own ship.
- English sea captain
- old sea captain
- merchant sea captain
Examples
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My father is a sea captain who was washed overboard in a storm.
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My grandmother, Betty Hemings, was the daughter of a full-blooded African slave woman and an English sea captain, name of Hemings.
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My father was a sea captain.
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Her father had been a sea captain.
Fiction book (1997) -
A brilliant young sea captain named Mason Tombs.
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A real sea captain.
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You see, I'm from many generations, all the way back to my grandfathers, my father, all sea captains.
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There were civilian sea captains killed far from home when their ships ran aground on the reef.
Academic text (2005) -
The harbor master said, "I wouldn't recommend it; I'm a sea captain myself, and I certainly wouldn't venture out to sea in just any old boat."
Fiction book (1999) -
My father is a licensed sea captain who has navigated the world's oceans.
Synonyms
∞
3.7
A person in charge of a group or place
611
1.1
The person in charge of a ship or aircraft and its crew
122
4.1
A person in charge of a ship or boat
Person who is in charge of a ship, like a captain
A senior naval officer in charge of a flagship carrying an admiral
How Senior
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'an officer who commands a ship at sea' is directly and compositionally derived from 'sea' (marine environment) + 'captain' (person in charge). This straightforward noun-noun combination is cross-linguistically common and follows regular English compounding, so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
The noun sea captain comes from the simple picture of a captain on the sea who leads and cares for a ship and its crew. So it means 'the officer in charge of a ship'.