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boat

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EnglishEdit

 
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A boat kept on land

EtymologyEdit

From Middle English boot, bot, boet, boyt (“boat”), from Old English bāt (“boat”), from Proto-Germanic *baitaz, *baitą (“boat, small ship”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyd- (“to break, split”). Cognate with Old Norse beit (“boat”), Middle Dutch beitel (“little boat”).

Old Norse bátr (whence Icelandic bátur, Norwegian båt), Dutch boot, German Boot, Occitan batèl and French bateau are all ultimately borrowings from the Old English word.

PronunciationEdit

NounEdit

boat (plural boats)

  1. A craft used for transportation of goods, fishing, racing, recreational cruising, or military use on or in the water, propelled by oars or outboard motor or inboard motor or by wind.
    • 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, OCLC 639762314, page 0147:
      Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, […]. Even such a boat as the Mount Vernon offered a total deck space so cramped as to leave secrecy or privacy well out of the question, even had the motley and democratic assemblage of passengers been disposed to accord either.
    • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 8, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:
      Philander went into the next room […] and came back with a salt mackerel […] . Next he put the mackerel in a fry-pan, and the shanty began to smell like a Banks boat just in from a v'yage.
    • 2013 August 3, “Yesterday’s fuel”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:
      The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania. The first barrels of crude fetched $18 (around $450 at today’s prices).
  2. (poker slang) A full house.
  3. A vehicle, utensil, or dish somewhat resembling a boat in shape.
    a stone boat;  a gravy boat
  4. (chemistry) One of two possible conformations of cyclohexane rings (the other being chair), shaped roughly like a boat.
  5. (Australia, politics, informal) The refugee boats arriving in Australian waters, and by extension, refugees generally.

Usage notesEdit

  • There is no explicit limit, but the word boat usually refers to a relatively small watercraft, smaller than a ship but larger than a dinghy. It is also the normal designation for a submarine (however large), and also for lakers (ships used in the Great Lakes trade in North America).

SynonymsEdit

HyponymsEdit

Terms denoting specific kinds of boat, apart from derived terms

Derived termsEdit

Terms derived from boat (noun)

TranslationsEdit

DescendantsEdit

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

VerbEdit

boat (third-person singular simple present boats, present participle boating, simple past and past participle boated)

  1. (intransitive) To travel by boat.
  2. (transitive) To transport in a boat.
    to boat goods
  3. (transitive) To place in a boat.
    to boat oars

TranslationsEdit

AnagramsEdit

FinnishEdit

NounEdit

boat

  1. Nominative plural form of boa.

AnagramsEdit

LatinEdit

MalayEdit

Alternative formsEdit

EtymologyEdit

From Proto-Malayic *buat, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *buhat.

PronunciationEdit

VerbEdit

boat (1701, used in the form berboat)

  1. Obsolete form of buat.

West FrisianEdit

PronunciationEdit

NounEdit

boat n (plural boaten)

  1. boat

Derived termsEdit

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