In honor of the first unofficial week of summer, this week’s word practically oozes “summer.” I must thank my friend Lisa Esperum for suggesting it.

That word is, of course, snorkel, and while it may justly conjure up images of tropical fish and long, hot days on the beach or pool or lake, it actually has a fairly dark beginning. It comes from the German word “Schnorchel” (also schnorkel or Schnorkel), meaning “nose,” which is apt considering that it usually refers, of course, to the breathing tube used so well by swimmers and divers to breathe underwater.

But, the word originally came into English by way of World War II. Late in the war, the German navy, or Kriegsmarine, was inspired by — i.e. stole — what had been a Dutch invention, namely, that of an airshaft for submerged diesel submarines that allowed them to run their engines underwater by venting exhaust fumes and taking in fresh air.

Without a snorkel, diesel U-boats (Unterseeboots, literally “undersea boats”) could only operate underwater on limited battery power and would have to spend vulnerable time above the water. During the Battle of the Atlantic, which raged back and forth for the duration of the war and pitted the infamous “wolf packs” of German U-boats against Allied supply convoys and their destroyer escorts, both sides worked continuously to tactically and technologically upstage the other.

The Allies deployed aircraft, depth charges, code breakers and sound navigation and ranging — i.e. “sonar” — systems to counteract this menace to their supply lines from the United States to embattled Britain, while the Nazis responded with quieter and longer-range U-boats, including the fast and fearsome Type XXI “Elektroboot,” with its six forward torpedo tubes and 60-hour underwater cruise capacity, courtesy of its snorkel (other older German subs had also been equipped with it).

Thankfully for us, these deadly subs were not deployed in large numbers and only at the very end of the war, too late to have any appreciable effect. Captured Type XXIs were so advanced, however, that they formed the inspiration for early Cold War-era American and Soviet submarines.

The first appearance of the word in English comes to us courtesy of newspaper accounts, including this line from a March 3, 1945 story in the Illustrated London News: “The most recent move in this never-ceasing battle was the introduction … of the ‘Schnorkel’ apparatus.”

Incidentally, the first person to use “snorkel,” as noted by the Oxford English Dictionary, was, appropriately, the French naval officer and oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910-1997) in 1953’s The Silent World with the line: “They claimed we drove away fish, damaged nets, looted their seines and caused mistrals with our schnorkels.”

The beloved Cousteau invented the “aqua-lung,” an early self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, or scuba. He was also known for his colorful TV documentary series, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, which profiled his exploratory adventures aboard the research ship Calypso.

Ending on that happier note, I hope you enjoyed our Cousteau-like examination of snorkel. If you have any wordy ideas, please send them to me and, until next time, cheerio!

Reach columnist Will Mari at features@dailyuw.com.