to go to sea
9
4.2
- phrasal verb
- He decided to go to sea and pursue his dream of becoming a sailor.
- a sailor going to sea
- want to go to sea
- go to sea again
Examples
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I left my daughter to be raised by her grandmother and went to sea.
Fiction book (1992) -
An orphan at the age of eleven, Ian Gallagher ran away from the slums of Belfast and went to sea as a cabin boy.
Fiction book (1998) -
Sometimes a man needs to go to sea.
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But I wonder if he'll ever go to sea again.
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That was the first question they asked me when I decided to go to sea.
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I think I'll go to sea.
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Charles has gone to sea under the protection of Captain Geary on the Ramillies.
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They were going to sea because it was wartime; they were friends and shipped together.
Fiction book (1991) -
The security of hearth is not for a sailor, and I resolved to go to sea once more, perhaps for a final time, to fulfill my promise to Your Highnesses, and my obligations as High Admiral.
Fiction book (1999) -
Born into the ranks of the minor French nobility, DuBignon went to sea at age ten to escape the poverty so common to provincial aristocrats in his native Brittany.
Academic text (2007)
Synonyms
27
3.0
To go on a large boat to travel or work as crew
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The words 'go' + 'to' + 'sea' literally suggest moving toward the ocean, so a learner who knows the parts can infer a physical movement; however the conventionalized sense 'to go into a seafaring career / become a sailor' is a career-specific, idiomatic extension that is not fully predictable from the constituents. Because the phrase shifts from a literal motion to a specialized occupational meaning, it is partially transparent but requires exposure to acquire the full sense.
Etymology
The phrase go to sea comes from a simple picture: a person leaving home to go out onto the sea on a ship to live and work. So, it now means 'to begin a life or career sailing on the ocean'.