▪ I. seafaring, n.
(ˈsiːfɛərɪŋ)
[f. sea n. + faring vbl. n.]
Travelling by sea; the business or calling of a sailor.
| 1592 Warner Alb. Eng. Prose Addit. 190 After long and wearie Sea-faring. 1628 Sir R. Le Grys tr. Barclay's Argenis ii. 108 My Countrey..is Rhegium; my profession, sea-faring. 1712 Steele Spect. No. 486 ¶4 She is the Wife of a Sailor, and the kept Mistress of a Man of Quality; she dwells with the latter during the Sea-faring of the former. 1879 Butcher & Lang Odyss. 172 All day long her sails were stretched in her seafaring. |
b. attrib. quasi-adj. Of or pertaining to travelling, living or working at sea.
| 1601 R. Johnson Kingd. & Commw. (1603) 40 The skilfull prowesse and seafaring dexteritie of the English. 1745 Life Bampfylde-Moore Carew 22 An Insight into the Seafaring Life. 1867 Freeman Norm. Conq. I. ii. (1877) 56 The old sea⁓faring spirit seems to have died out. |
▪ II. ˈseaˌfaring, a.
[f. sea n. + faring ppl. a.]
1. Of persons: Travelling on the sea; following the sea as a calling, gaining a livelihood at sea. † Also absol. in pl. sense.
| c 1200 Trin. Coll. Hom. 161 Ðan þe safarinde men seð þe sasterre, hie wuten sone wuderward hie sullen weie holden. 1405 York Bidding Prayer in Lay-Folks Mass Bk. 65 Ȝe sal pray..for al land tilland and for al see farand..and for the fruyt that es on erthe. 1566 Act 8 Eliz. c. 13 §1 Beyng as beakons and markes of auncient tyme accustomed for Seafaryng men. 1590 Shakes. Com. Err. i. i. 81. 1691 T. H[ale] Acc. New Invent. p. lxx, Some Sea-faring People, inhabitants by the Thames-side in Wapping. 1744 Berkeley Siris §117 To sailors and all seafaring persons. 1819 Edin. Ann. Reg. (1823) XII. App. 85 James Lincoln, a seafaring man at Sunderland, knew the prisoner Eden for twenty years. 1868 M. E. Braddon Run to Earth I. i. 2 The two men..belonged to the seafaring community. |
b. transf. Applied to a bird.
| 1880 Swinburne Studies in Song 86 Seafaring birds. |
† 2. Of a plant: Growing by the sea. Obs. rare—1.
| 1670 W. Simpson Hydrol. Ess. 69 A marine salt..works it self into the texture of those sea-faring plants. |