seafaring

From Middle English safarinde, see farand, se farinde, equivalent to sea +‎ faring (“travelling; journeying; going”). Compare Old English sǣ-līþende (“seafaring”). Cognate with Dutch zeevarend (“seafaring”), German Low German seefahrend (“seafaring”), German seefahrend (“seafaring”), Danish søfarende (“seafaring”), Swedish sjöfarande (“seafaring”).

seafaring (comparative more seafaring, superlative most seafaring)

1. Living one's life at sea.
   • 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter IV, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, volume 1, New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC:

     There was absolutely nothing about the body to suggest that it might possibly in life have known a maritime experience. It was the body of a low type of man or a high type of beast. In neither instance would it have been of a seafaring race. Therefore I deduced that it was native to Caprona--that it lived inland, and that it had fallen or been hurled from the cliffs above.

2. Fit to travel on the sea; seagoing.
   • A rowing boat is not a seafaring craft.

From sea +‎ faring.

seafaring (plural seafarings)

1. The act, process, or practice of travelling the seas
2. The work, or calling of a sailor.