float
Noun pluralfloats
Formsfloats, floating, floated
Pluralfloats
- 1
- 2A device that stays on the surface of water or another liquid and holds something up.
The angler's float dipped sharply as a fish took the bait.
Floats along the rope marked the edge of the swimming area.
Note
The nouns come down a separate line from the verb, through Old English flota, "sailor, boat", although both trace back to the same Indo-European root. For anglers, a float is the bobbing marker tied to the line above the hook, alongside the weight. Cork is the classic material: "There's nothing like them on big cork floats," says the veteran in The Fisherman Who Laughed (1983).
- 3A lavishly decorated vehicle or trailer that is driven or towed in a parade or pageant as a display.
Each float in the procession carried a different theme.
Volunteers spent weeks decorating the festival floats.
- 4A soft drink served with a scoop of ice cream floating in it.
The diner is famous for its old-fashioned root beer float.
He stirred his float until the ice cream melted into the soda.
- 5To travel through the air with a slow, gentle drifting motion.
Dandelion seeds float on the slightest breeze.
A single feather floated down from the rafters of the barn.
Similardrift
- 6To put forward an idea for others to consider.
Management floated a proposal to reduce weekend shifts.
Before deciding, the committee will float several options to the staff.
Similarpropose, suggest, raise, moot
Note
Its fixed partner is idea: you float the idea of something. Steve Holland and Joseph Ax, reporting in 2025, wrote that Trump floated the idea of turning Canada into a U.S. state. The image is of setting a proposal on the water to see whether it stays up, which ties it to the "viable" meaning. Floating an idea puts it forward tentatively, without yet committing to it.
- 7To have the ability to stay on the surface of a liquid rather than sinking.
Pumice is unusual among rocks because it floats.
Test whether the materials float before building the raft.
Oppositesink
- 8To move in a certain direction by being carried along with the liquid one is floating in.
They floated down the canal as the current carried them.
Empty bottles float out to sea on the outgoing tide.
Similardrift
- 9
- 10A foam toy designed to stay afloat, used for play in swimming pools.
Brightly colored floats bobbed across the shallow end.
He clung to a float while learning to kick.
- 11To be held up by a fluid that is denser than the object itself.
A hot-air balloon floats because the warm air inside is lighter than the air around it.
Objects float when the fluid around them is denser than they are.
Similarride
Oppositesink
Note
The verb's oldest sense runs back through Old English flotian to an Indo-European root meaning "to float, swim, fly", the same source behind flow and fleet. The supporting fluid need not be water: helium balloons float in air. That is what sets it apart from the surface-riding sense, where something rests on a liquid with part of it showing above. Ride is a close synonym.
- 12
- 13To cause something to drift gently through the air; to waft it along.
The fan floated the balloons across the room.
Festival-goers float paper lanterns up into the evening sky.
Note
A transitive use with a lyric ring. Walt Whitman, in "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" (1865), floats a song over the tree-tops and a carol over prairies and crowded cities. The object can be something weightless and immaterial, a sound sent out on the air. Waft is the everyday near-equivalent, and stream sits close by.
- 14To cause something to be held up within a fluid denser than itself.
Workers floated the heavy pontoon by sealing its air chambers.
Increase the water's salinity to float the dense brine shrimp eggs.
Oppositesink
- 15
- 16
- 17Of a currency: to have an exchange value set by the markets rather than fixed by a central authority.
The peso began to float after the central bank abandoned its peg.
Several emerging-market currencies now float freely against the dollar.
Note
Finance borrows the idea of being untethered. A floating currency is tied to no fixed reference, much as the electronics sense describes a circuit with no reference voltage. The construction is intransitive and usually takes against: the yen floats against the dollar. When an authority lets this happen, the verb turns transitive in its causative partner.
- 18To offer shares in a company or units in a trust for sale to the public, then list them on a stock exchange.
The founders decided to float the company on the London exchange.
They floated the business at a valuation of two billion dollars.
Similarlist
Note
The usual pattern is to float a company on a named exchange. Dewi Cooke, in The Age (2005), wrote of a founder who floated his company on the Milan Stock Exchange. The use goes back at least to colonial mining. Harriet W. Daly (1887) recalls unprincipled promoters telling prospectors to peg out a claim anywhere: "we will float it." The noun for the offering itself is a share offering.
- 19A small sum of money placed in a cashier's till at the start of business so that change can be made.
The cashier counted the float before opening the store.
We keep a fifty-dollar float in each register.
- 20Funds that have been committed to be paid but have not yet been paid out.
The company earns interest on the float between billing and payment.
Banks profit from the float created by check-clearing delays.
Note
Bankers treat the float as a quantity to be managed. One bank, for example, runs a nightly sweep of accounts to adjust its float and stay within reserve limits. The float is money in transit, already promised but not yet paid. Several specialized floats sit close by. Insurers have their own, the insurer's float of premiums collected but not yet paid out.
- 21To allow a currency's exchange value to be set by the markets rather than fixing it by decree.
The government decided to float the currency in 1971.
Officials floated the peso to ease pressure on the reserves.
Oppositepeg
Note
Governments are the usual subject, and the currency is named outright as the object: the government floated the pound. The verb often marks a forced retreat from a fixed rate. Pressure on the baht in 1997 led to a crisis that forced Thailand's government to float it. Once floated, the currency is described with the intransitive verb: it floats.
- 22Timber or boards bound together into a single mass so that a river's current can carry them downstream.
The lumberjacks guided the float down the river to the mill.
A float of logs drifted toward the sawmill at dawn.
Similarraft
- 23A small vehicle used for local deliveries, especially the milk float that brings milk to homes.
The milkman parked his float at the end of the street.
Every morning the electric float hummed along the terraced road.
Note
This is a British word, and today it lives mainly in the compound milk float. Older use was broader. In D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers (1913), Paul drives off in "the milkman's heavy float" up to Willey Farm. Outside Britain, readers may not recognize a float as a delivery vehicle at all. Milk float is the safest form to use.
- 24A kind of trowel used to finish concrete surfaces or to smooth plaster.
The mason smoothed the wet cement with a wooden float.
She passed the float over the plaster to level it.
- 25To prepare a till for operation, either by placing a starting amount of cash in the drawer for change or by recording when a card-only till begins use.
The manager floated the till before the shop opened.
Staff must float each register at the start of the shift.
Note
Retail staff use the verb for a till's start-of-shift routine. The passive is common: the till needs to be floated first. The verb grows out of the cash sum, the change put in the drawer. It has since stretched to card-only tills, which hold no cash. For those, floating means recording the time the till starts being used.
- 26
- 27The offer of a company's shares, or a trust's units, to the general public, usually as the first step toward listing on a stock exchange.
The float raised over a billion dollars for the airline.
Investors waited eagerly for the company's float.
Similarflotation, IPO, listing
Note
Australian finance uses this noun where other usage might speak of a public offering, and the word may extend more widely in the Commonwealth. Investors buy shares in a float. A 2006 guide from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission points out that no broker is needed when a company is about to list on the Australian Stock Exchange. The action itself is the verb of listing.
- 28In computing, a number stored in floating-point form, especially one with less precision than a double.
- 29To be free of any tie to a fixed reference, rather than being set or held in place by one.
- 30To make an element within a document sit beside or above the others, with surrounding content wrapping around it.
- 31In web design, a layout property that shifts an element to the left or right of its container, letting text and other inline content flow around it.
- 32Of an aircraft, to stay just above the runway too long before touching down because it is still moving too fast as it levels off.
- 33To change a setting automatically so that it keeps pace with other values it depends on.
- 34To coat a surface with plaster, working it on with the flat tool known as a float.
- 35To smooth or shape something with a coarse file-like tool.
- 36To carry a horse, vehicle or other load on or in a trailer known as a float.
- 37In poker, to call a bet with a weak hand, intending to bluff on a later betting round.
- 38One of the flat paddles on a waterwheel or paddle wheel.
- 39A coarse file-like tool used by workers in several trades for smoothing material.
- 40The total value of checks written on an account that the bank has not yet processed and deducted.
- 41Money an insurer has collected in premiums but has not yet paid out in claims, which it can invest meanwhile.
- 42In poker, a play of calling a bet with a poor hand, planning to bluff on a later card.
- 43In weaving, a length of thread that skips across two or more threads running the other way.
- 44In knitting with two or more yarns, a loose length of yarn carried across the back of the work behind stitches.
- 45In basketry, an ornamental rod laid over the woven body and left loose along part of its length.
- 46A big rig, often with a trailer, built to haul several new or used cars at once.
- 47A trailer with a very low bed, used for hauling heavy machinery.
- 48A flowing or streaming movement.
Hee being now in Float for Treasure.
1622, Francis, Lord Verulam - 49In marble work, a block used to rub and polish the stone.
- 50A cart for carrying coal.
- 51In breaking, a move where the dancer holds the body level just above the floor, supported on the hands alone.
- 52In siphonophores such as the Portuguese man-of-war, the gas-filled bladder that keeps the colony buoyant.
- 53In page layout, an item such as a figure, table or pull quote that sits outside the main text flow, loosely tied to a spot in it.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
From Middle English floten, from Old English flotian ('to float'), going back through Proto-Germanic *flutōną to the Proto-Indo-European root *plew-, meaning 'to float, swim, fly'. It is related to flow and fleet.
From Middle English flote, from Old English flota ('sailor, boat'), going back through Proto-Germanic *flutô to the Proto-Indo-European root *plewd-.