aquamarine

\ \ [19] Aquamarine means literally ‘sea water’ – from Latin aqua marīna. Its first application in English was to the precious stone, a variety of beryl, so named because of its bluish-green colour. The art critic John Ruskin seems to have been the first to use it with reference to the colour itself, in Modern Painters 1846. (The French version of the word, aiguemarine, was actually used in English somewhat earlier, in the mid 18th century, but it did not long survive the introduction of the Latin version.) Latin aqua ‘water’ has of course contributed a number of other words to English, notably aquatic [15] (from Latin aquāticus), aqualung (coined around 1950), aquarelle [19] (via Italian acquerella ‘water colour’), aquatint [18] (literally ‘dyed water’), aqueduct [16] (from Latin aquaeductus), and aqueous [17] (a medieval Latin formation); it is related to Old English ēa ‘water’ and īg ‘island’, and is of course the source of French eau, Italian acqua, and Spanish agua.