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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

fleet.

A group of vessels or vehicles, generally operating in a unified way or traveling together.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈfliːt/[ˈflɪi̯t]
  1. A group of vessels or vehicles, generally operating in a unified way or traveling together.

    collective
    A fleet of warships is heading this way.
    merchant fleet, shadow fleet
  2. A group of vessels or vehicles, generally operating in a unified way or traveling together. The vehicles commercially owned by a person, company or agency.

    collective
    She owns a fleet of private medical transport vans.
    fleet car, fleet truck, fleet vehicle
  3. A group of vessels or vehicles, generally operating in a unified way or traveling together. A number of vessels in company, especially war vessels; the vessels commanded by a single officer; also, the collective naval force of a country, etc.

    collective
    We must invest in our fleet for our national security.
  4. A group of vessels or vehicles, generally operating in a unified way or traveling together. Any command of vessels exceeding a squadron in size, or a rear admiral's command, composed of five sail-of-the-line, with any number of smaller vessels.

    British-Royal-Navy · collective
  5. A large, coordinated group of people.

    collective
  6. Any group of associated items.

  7. Any group of associated items. A street gang.

    Scotland
  8. The individual waves in corrugated fiberboard.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English flete, flet (“fleet”), from Old English flēot (“ship”), likely related to Proto-West Germanic *flotōn, from Proto-Germanic *flutōną (“to float”).

noun/ˈfliːt/[ˈflɪi̯t]
  1. An arm of the sea; a run of water, such as an inlet or a creek.

    dialectal
  2. A location, as on a navigable river, where barges are secured.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English flete (“bay, gulf”), from Old English flēot (“a bay, gulf, an arm of the sea, estuary, the mouth of a river”), from Proto-West Germanic *fleut, from Proto-Germanic *fleutą. Cognate with Dutch vliet (“stream, river, creek, inlet”), German Fleet (“watercourse, canal”).

verb/ˈfliːt/[ˈflɪi̯t]
  1. To float.

    intransitive · obsolete
  2. To pass over rapidly; to skim the surface of.

    ambitransitive
  3. To hasten over; to cause to pass away lightly, or in mirth and joy.

    ambitransitive
  4. To flee, to escape, to speed away.

    intransitive
  5. To evanesce, disappear, die out.

    intransitive
  6. To move up a rope, so as to haul to more advantage; especially to draw apart the blocks of a tackle.

  7. To move or change in position.

    intransitive
  8. To shift the position of dead-eyes when the shrouds are become too long.

    obsolete
  9. To cause to slip down the barrel of a capstan or windlass, as a rope or chain.

  10. To take the cream from; to skim.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English fleten (“float”), from Old English flēotan (“float”), from Proto-West Germanic *fleutan, from Proto-Germanic *fleutaną.

adj/ˈfliːt/[ˈflɪi̯t]
  1. Swift in motion; light and quick in going from place to place.

    literary
  2. Light; superficially thin; not penetrating deep, as soil.

    uncommon
Where this word comes from

From Middle English fleten (“float”), from Old English flēotan (“float”), from Proto-West Germanic *fleutan, from Proto-Germanic *fleutaną.

noun/ˈfliːt/[ˈflɪi̯t]
  1. Obsolete form of flet (“house, floor, large room”).

    Yorkshire · alt-of · obsolete
Where this word comes from

See flet.

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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.