boats

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of boat.

   Several boats were tied up along the wooden dock.

   Rescue crews launched their boats as the floodwaters rose.

   Note

   The plural carries every sense of the singular, not just watercraft. In slang it counts full houses. Informally it describes big, wastefully sized cars, and chemists use it for the boat-shaped conformations of cyclohexane rings, set against the chair form. In informal Australian English, the boats are refugee vessels arriving in Australian waters, and by extension refugees themselves. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of boat.

   My uncle boats out to the reef most mornings to check his traps.

   Whenever the weather clears, she boats across the lake to the far shore.

   Note

   The verb works with or without an object. Used alone, it means traveling by water (she boats across the lake). With an object, it means carrying something by boat or placing it in one (he boats the catch ashore). An obsolete slang sense meant transporting a convict to a penal colony, so it belongs to older writing and not to present-day use.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2