# floating

Pronunciation: say "FLOH-ting" US /ˈfloʊtɪŋ/, UK /ˈfləʊtɪŋ/

## Adjective

1. Able to float; resting on the surface of a liquid or held up in the air rather than sinking.
   - Simple: Resting on top of water or in the air without sinking or falling.
   - _Rescuers reached the floating debris before it scattered across the harbor._
   - _A floating platform anchored offshore served as the divers' base._
3. Not fixed in position or opinion; free to move or drift rather than held in one place.
   - Simple: Not fixed in one place or one opinion, and free to move or change.
   - _The committee kept a few floating seats open for late appointments._
   - _A large bloc of floating voters decided the election._
6. In phonology, describing a feature that is not linked to any consonant or vowel within its own morpheme.
   - Simple: In the study of speech sounds, describing a feature that is not joined to any single sound in its word part.
   - _The analysis posits a floating tone that docks onto the following vowel._
   - _She marked the floating nasal feature that surfaces only across a word boundary._

## Verb

2. Present participle and gerund of float. — present participle and gerund of float
   - Simple: Present participle of float. Use this form for something happening right now.
   - _She spent the afternoon floating lazily on her back in the pool._
   - _Bits of cork were floating across the surface of the tank._

## Noun

4. The motion of an object as it rests and drifts on a liquid or hangs in the air.
   - Simple: The gentle movement of something resting on water or in the air.
   - _The gentle floating of the boat on the lake calmed the children._
   - _Astronauts described the eerie floating of every loose object inside the cabin._
5. Solid material that rests on the surface of a liquid rather than settling or sinking.
   - Simple: Bits of solid stuff that rest on top of a liquid instead of sinking.
   - _Workers raked the floating away from the intake screen each morning._
   - _After the flood, a mat of floating clogged the narrow channel._
7. The act of spreading and leveling a coat of plaster across the surface of a wall.
   - Simple: The work of spreading plaster smoothly and evenly over the surface of a wall.
   - _Once the first coat had set, the crew moved on to the floating._
   - _Even floating left the bedroom walls ready for their final finish._
8. A veterinary dental procedure that files down the sharp edges that form on a horse's teeth.
   - Simple: The filing down of sharp edges on a horse's teeth by a vet.
   - _Annual floating corrects the sharp points that develop on a horse's molars._
   - _The mare needed a floating after she began dropping half-chewed hay._

## Origin

Formed within English from the verb "float" and the suffix "-ing".

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/floating (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).