Word.ws English Dictionary

boat

UK/bəʊ̯t//boʊ̯t/

boat noun: a small, usually open craft used for travelling over water, propelled by oars, motor or wind. Usually contrasted with "ship". Also the alternative form of BOAT.

boat: vessel for travelling by water
Image: Tomasz Sienicki, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

boat (plural boats)

  1. A small, usually open craft used for travelling over water, propelled by oars, motor or wind. Usually contrasted with "ship".
    • We can't get everything in the boat. We'll leave this stuff behind.
    • Even such a boat as the Mount Vernon offered a total deck space so cramped as to leave secrecy or privacy well out of the question, even had the motley and democratic assemblage of passengers been disposed to accord either.1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    craft, ship, vessel
  2. A submarine.
  3. (colloquial) A large, ocean-going ship.
  4. (A container resembling a boat in shape.) A shallow jug used to serve sauces or other liquid foods.
    • a stone boat; a gravy boat
  5. (A container resembling a boat in shape., Anglicanism) A vessel used to store the incense to be burned during a service; an incense boat.
    • And then when all were vested he had stood holding out the boat to the rector and the rector had put a spoonful of incense in it and it had hissed on the red coals.1916, James Joyce, chapter I, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC
  6. (slang, Other senses.) A full house.
  7. (US, informal, Other senses.) A car, especially a large or heavy one.
    • Near-synonyms: land yacht, sled
    • He claimed to be broke but he always drove that ridiculous boat.
    Synonyms:
    land yacht, sled
  8. (physical, Other senses.) One of two possible conformations of cyclohexane rings (the other being chair), shaped roughly like a boat.
  9. (slang, Other senses.) The face (compare boat race).
  10. (Australian, informal, Other senses.) The refugee boats arriving in Australian waters, and by extension, refugees generally.
  11. (Other senses.) In Conway’s Game of Life, a particular still life consisting of a dead cell surrounded by five living cells.
    • It creates 4 blocks, a boat, and a glider every 768 generations.1994 May 7, David Bell, “HighLife - An Interesting Variant of Life (part 1/3)”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet)
    • The program is represented as a string of boats (1s) and blocks (0s).2004 May 24, Paul Chapman, “A Prototype Programmable Universal Constructor for Conway's Life”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet)

Verb

boat (third-person singular simple present boats, present participle boating, simple past and past participle boated)

  1. (intransitive) To travel by boat.
  2. (transitive) To transport in a boat.
    • to boat goods
  3. (obsolete, slang, transitive) To transport (deport to a penal colony).
    • Troy was 'boated' for seven years after being found guilty of burglary and robbery.2021, Graham Seal, Condemned, page 120
  4. (transitive) To place in a boat.
    • to boat oars

Noun (2) capitalized: BOAT

BOAT (plural BOATs)

  1. (Internet, abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of best of all time.
  2. (UK, abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of byway open to all traffic.

Proper noun capitalized: BOAT

BOAT

  1. (abbreviation, acronym, informal) Acronym of brightest of all time (“the brightest gamma-ray burst ever recorded in the universe”).

Noun (3) capitalized: BoAT

BoAT

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of BOAT.

Noun (4) capitalized: BoaT

BoaT

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of BOAT.

Also used as

boat is also the alternative form of BOAT.

boat meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

boat in Hindi

water craft — see also watercraft, vessel, ship
नाव nāv, नौका naukā, डोँगी ḍõgī, डोँगा ḍõgā, बेड़ी beṛī, बेड़ा beṛā

boat in Tamil

water craft — see also watercraft, vessel, ship
நவாடா navāṭā, படகு paṭaku

boat in Marathi

water craft — see also watercraft, vessel, ship
नौका naukā

boat in Urdu

water craft — see also watercraft, vessel, ship
کَشْتی kaśtī, ناو nāo, بیڑا beṛā, بوٹ boṭ, زَورَق zauraq
More languagesFewer languages
boat in Bengali
নৌকা nōuka, তরী tori
boat in Telugu
పడవ paḍava, నావ nāva
boat in Malayalam
വഞ്ചി vañci, വള്ളം vaḷḷaṁ
boat in Kannada
ದೋಣಿ dōṇi
boat in Punjabi
ਨਾਉ nāu
boat in Gujarati
નાવ nāv, હોડી hoḍī
boat in Odia
ଡଙ୍ଗା ḍaṅgā, ବୋଇତ boita, ଗୋରାପ gorāpa, ଜାହାଜ jāhāja
boat in Sanskrit
नौ nau, प्लवः plavaḥ
boat in Sinhala
බෝට්ටුව bōṭṭuwa
boat in Assamese
নাও naü
boat in Nepali
डुङ्गा ḍuṅgā
boat in Pashto
کښتۍ kex̌tǝy
boat in Tagalog
bangka
boat in Arabic
قَارِب qārib, مَرْكَب markab, زَوْرَق zawraq, مركب márkeb
boat in Malay
perahu
boat in Indonesian
perahu, sampan
boat in Persian
قَایِق qāyiq, زَوْرَق zawraq, کَشْتِی kaštī, کَرَجِی karajī
boat in Thai
เรือ rʉʉa
boat in Vietnamese
thuyền
boat in Myanmar
လှေ hle
Sindhi
ٻيڙيِ bberii
Dhivehi
ދޯނި dōni, ބޯޓު bōṭu

Examples of boat in a sentence

  • Next he put the mackerel in a fry-pan, and the shanty began to smell like a Banks boat just in from a v'yage.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
  • Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania.2013 August 3, “Yesterday’s fuel”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:

All 40 example sentences with boat

Synonyms of boat

All synonyms of boat

Forms of boat

Noun
pluralboats
pluralBOATs
alternative formBoaT
alternative formBoAT
alternative formB.O.A.T.
alternative formB. O. A. T.
alternative formBoat
alternative formboat
Verb
third-person singular presentboats
present participleboating
past participleboated
pastboated

Plural of boat: boats

Origin of boat

From Middle English bot, boot, boet, boyt (“boat”), from Old English bāt (“boat”), from Proto-West Germanic *bait, from Proto-Germanic *baitaz, *baitą (“boat, small ship”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyd- (“to break, split”) (whence also fissure via Latin). Cognate with Old Norse beit (“boat”), Middle Dutch beitel (“little boat”). Old Norse bátr (whence Faroese and Icelandic bátur, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish båt, Danish båd), Dutch boot, German Boot, Occitan batèl and French bateau are all ultimately borrowings from the Old English word. Compare typologically ship << Proto-Indo-European *skey-; Russian долблёнка (dolbljónka) (< долби́ть (dolbítʹ)), Russian чёлн (čoln) (akin to коло́ть (kolótʹ)). False cognate of Sanskrit बेडा (beḍā).

Words formed from boat

Phrases with boat

171 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with boat

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about boat

What does boat mean?
Boat means a small, usually open craft used for travelling over water, propelled by oars, motor or wind. Usually contrasted with "ship".
What is boat in Hindi?
Boat in Hindi is नाव (nāv), नौका (naukā), डोँगी (ḍõgī). See Boat meaning in Hindi.
How do you use boat in a sentence?
Next he put the mackerel in a fry-pan, and the shanty began to smell like a Banks boat just in from a v'yage.
What part of speech is boat?
Boat can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce boat?
Boat is pronounced /bəʊ̯t/ (UK).
What is the plural of boat?
The plural of boat is boats.

Words near boat in the dictionary

  1. boastly
  2. boasts
  3. boastsome
  4. boastworthy
  5. boasty
  6. boat
  7. boat anchor
  8. boat anchors
  9. boat bearer
  10. boat bearers
  11. boat boy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: boat (page history and authors); BOAT (page history and authors); BoAT (page history and authors); BoaT (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-boat.ogg.

Cite this entry: “boat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/boat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.