aquarium: [19] Aquarium is a modern adaptation of the neuter form of the Latin adjective aquārius ‘watery’ (a noun aquārium existed in Roman times, but it meant ‘place where cattle drink’). Its model was vivarium, a 16th-century word for a ‘place for keeping live animals’. This was the term first pressed into service to describe such a place used for displaying fish and other aquatic life: in 1853 the magazine Athenaeum reported that ‘the new Fish house at the London Zoo has received the somewhat curious title of the “Marine Vivarium”’; and in the following year the guidebook to the Zoological Gardens called it the ‘Aquatic Vivarium’.
Within a year or two of this, however, the term aquarium had been coined and apparently established.
1830, noun use of neuter of Latin aquarius "pertaining to water," as a noun, "water-carrier," genitive of aqua "water" (see aqua-). The word existed in Latin, but there it meant "drinking place for cattle." Originally especially for growing aquatic plants; An earlier attempt at a name for "fish tank" was marine vivarium.
双语例句
1. Previous attempts at filtering and oxygenating aquarium water had failed.
之前尝试过几次将鱼缸中的水过滤并充氧，但都没有成功。
来自柯林斯例句
2. The aquarium has many tanks of fish.
那家水族馆有许多装在水箱中的鱼类.
来自《简明英汉词典》
3. The first time I saw seals was in an aquarium.
我第一次看见海豹是在水族馆里。
来自辞典例句
4. Inside was peacock water, rocks and weed'showing as in an aquarium.
礁石内侧:海水绚烂, 暗礁林立,海藻丛生,就象水族馆的生态展览一样.
来自辞典例句
5. The occasion begins well with a visit to the local aquarium.
