Word.ws English Dictionary

a rising tide lifts all boats

a rising tide lifts all boats proverb: a truly good outcome benefits all.

Proverb

a rising tide lifts all boats

  1. A truly good outcome benefits all.
    • Whereas in the 1960s, incomes rose as the economy grew—to use President Kennedy's phrase, “a rising tide lifts all the boats”—this no longer applied in the 1980s.2000, David Reynolds, chapter 17, in One World Divisible, W. W. Norton, →ISBN, page 653
    • Hay and other early gay rights activists were influenced by the Black civil rights movement in a broader sense, too. The rising tide of African American organizing raised all boats, and the hopes of all whose dreams had been deferred.2005 June 21, Leslie Feinberg, “Pre-Stonewall gay organizing”, in Workers World

Forms of a rising tide lifts all boats

alternative forma rising tide floats all boats

Questions about a rising tide lifts all boats

What does a rising tide lifts all boats mean?
A rising tide lifts all boats means a truly good outcome benefits all.
What part of speech is a rising tide lifts all boats?
A rising tide lifts all boats is a proverb.

Words near a rising tide lifts all boats in the dictionary

  1. a quick drop and a sudden stop
  2. a quid for a quod
  3. a revolution is not a dinner party
  4. A ring
  5. A rings
  6. a rising tide lifts all boats
  7. A road
  8. A roads
  9. a Roland for an Oliver
  10. A roll
  11. a rolling stone gathers no moss

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: a rising tide lifts all boats (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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