boat
UK /bəʊ̯t/ · US /boʊ̯t/ noun, verb
Forms boats boating boated B.O.A.T. B. O. A. T.
- noun A small, usually open craft used for travelling over water, propelled by oars, motor or wind. Usually contrasted with "ship". “We can't get everything in the boat. We'll leave this stuff behind.”
- noun A submarine.
- noun (chiefly colloquial) A large, ocean-going ship.
- noun A shallow jug used to serve sauces or other liquid foods. “a stone boat; a gravy boat”
- noun (Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism) A vessel used to store the incense to be burned during a service; an incense boat.
- noun (poker slang) A full house.
- noun (US, informal) A car, especially a large or heavy one. “He claimed to be broke but he always drove that ridiculous boat.”
- noun (organic chemistry, physical chemistry) One of two possible conformations of cyclohexane rings (the other being chair), shaped roughly like a boat.
- verb (intransitive) To travel by boat.
- verb (transitive) To transport in a boat. “to boat goods”
- verb (transitive, slang, obsolete) To transport (deport to a penal colony).
- verb (transitive) To place in a boat. “to boat oars”
Synonyms
craft ship vessel land yacht sled gravy boat gravy holder sauceboat
Etymology
From Middle English bot, boot, boet, boyt (“boat”), from Old English bāt (“boat”), from Proto-West Germanic *bait, from Proto-Germanic *baitaz, *baitą (“boat, small ship”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyd- (“to break, split”) (whence also fissure via Latin). Cognate with Old Norse beit (“boat”), Middle Dutch beitel (“little boat”).
Old Norse bátr (whence Faroese and Icelandic bátur, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish båt, Danish båd), Dutch boot, German Boot, Occitan batèl and French bateau are all ultimately borrowings from the Old English word.
Compare typologically ship << Proto-Indo-European *skey-; Russian долблёнка (dolbljónka) (< долби́ть (dolbítʹ)), Russian чёлн (čoln) (akin to коло́ть (kolótʹ)).
False cognate of Sanskrit बेडा (beḍā).
Webster’s 1913
- noun A small open vessel, or water craft, usually moved by cars or paddles, but often by a sail.
- noun Hence, any vessel; usually with some epithet descriptive of its use or mode of propulsion; as, pilot boat, packet boat, passage boat, advice boat, etc. The term is sometimes applied to steam vessels, even of the largest class; as, the Cunard boats.
- verb To transport in a boat; as, to boat goods.
- verb To place in a boat; as, to boat oars. To boat the oars. See under Oar.
Etymology [OE. boot, bat, AS. bat; akin to Icel. batr, Sw. båt, Dan. baad, D.& G. boot. Cf. Bateau.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “boat”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details