boat.
Vessel for travelling by water.
Meaning & usage
Vessel for travelling by water. 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.
Vessel for travelling by water. A submarine.
Vessel for travelling by water. A large, ocean-going ship.
A shallow jug used to serve sauces or other liquid foods.
a stone boat; a gravy boat
A vessel used to store the incense to be burned during a service; an incense boat.
A full house.
A car, especially a large or heavy one.
He claimed to be broke but he always drove that ridiculous boat.
One of two possible conformations of cyclohexane rings (the other being chair), shaped roughly like a boat.
The face (compare boat race).
The refugee boats arriving in Australian waters, and by extension, refugees generally.
In Conway’s Game of Life, a particular still life consisting of a dead cell surrounded by five living cells.
Alternative form of BOAT.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyd- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *bʰóydos Proto-Germanic *baitaz Proto-West Germanic *bait Old English bāt Middle English bot English boat 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).
To travel by boat.
To transport in a boat.
to boat goods
To transport (deport to a penal colony).
To place in a boat.
to boat oars
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyd- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *bʰóydos Proto-Germanic *baitaz Proto-West Germanic *bait Old English bāt Middle English bot English boat 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).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.