Word.ws English Dictionary

Boaty McBoatface

Syllables: Boaty Mc·Boat·face/ˈbəʊti məkˈbəʊtfeɪs/US/ˈboʊti mɪkˈboʊtfeɪs/

Boaty McBoatface proper noun: an autonomous underwater vehicle launched in 2017, currently in service with the British Antarctic Survey to study the polar oceans.

boaty mcboatface: an autonomous underwater vehicle launched in 2017, currently in service with the British Antarctic...
Image: Seloloving, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Proper noun

Boaty McBoatface

  1. An autonomous underwater vehicle launched in 2017, currently in service with the British Antarctic Survey to study the polar oceans.
    • I am proud to say that the royal Arctic survey ship will be named after David Attenborough. There was strong support for Boaty McBoatface. I think the submarine on the boat will be named Boaty McBoatface but, quite rightly, Attenborough will take top billing.2016 May 11, David Cameron, Prime Minister, “Engagements”, in House of Commons Debates (House of Commons of the United Kingdom), volume 609, London: Parliament of the United Kingdom, archived from...
    • The UK's favourite new yellow submarine, Boaty McBoatface, is in training for grand challenge. Scientists plan to send the long-range autonomous vehicle under the sea-ice of the Arctic – from one side of the ocean basin to the other.2016 October 17, Jonathan Amos, “Arctic Crossing Planned for ‘Boaty’ Sub”, in BBC News, archived from the original on 30 Nov 2024

Verb

Boaty McBoatface (third-person singular simple present Boaty McBoatfaces, present participle Boaty McBoatfacing, simple past and past participle Boaty McBoatfaced)

  1. (humorous, neologism, transitive) To hijack or troll (a vote, especially one held online; or an organization conducting such a vote), by supporting a joke option.
    • [Donald] Trump is Boaty McBoatfacing the presidential election.2016 May 3, @GeorgeWept, Twitter, archived from the original on 13 Dec 2022
    • On this week's episode, Sonny Bunch (The Bulwark), Alyssa Rosenberg (The Washington Post), and Peter Suderman (Reason) ask if the Oscars made a big mistake by allowing a potential Boaty McBoatfacing situation by opening up voting to the Twitter-based masses.2022 February 28, Sonny Bunch, “98: Is the Video Game Movie Curse Broken?”, in The Bulwark, archived from the original on 07 Dec 2022
    Synonyms:
    McBoatface

Synonyms of Boaty McBoatface

Forms of Boaty McBoatface

third-person singular presentBoaty McBoatfaces
present participleBoaty McBoatfacing
past participleBoaty McBoatfaced
pastBoaty McBoatfaced

Origin of Boaty McBoatface

The proper noun was coined by the British BBC Radio Jersey presenter James Hand in 2016 as a humorous response to a public online poll held by the British government to name a new polar research ship. Despite the fact that “Boaty McBoatface” won decisively, receiving 33% of the overall vote (over three times as many as the second most favoured option), the organizers of the poll ultimately named the ship after British broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough. The name was instead given to one of the autonomous underwater vehicles (pictured) carried aboard the ship. The noun may be analyzed as boat + -y (diminutive suffix) + Mc- (patronymic commonly used to form Irish and Scottish names) + boat + face, and was possibly modelled after “Hooty McOwlface”, a name given to an adopted owl which went viral on the Internet in 2012. The verb is derived from the noun.

Words formed from Boaty McBoatface

Questions about Boaty McBoatface

What does Boaty McBoatface mean?
Boaty McBoatface means an autonomous underwater vehicle launched in 2017, currently in service with the British Antarctic Survey to study the polar oceans.
What part of speech is Boaty McBoatface?
Boaty McBoatface can be a proper noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce Boaty McBoatface?
Boaty McBoatface is pronounced /ˈbəʊti məkˈbəʊtfeɪs/ (UK).

Words near Boaty McBoatface in the dictionary

  1. boatwoman
  2. boatwomen
  3. boatwright
  4. boatwrights
  5. boaty
  6. Boaty McBoatface
  7. Boaty McBoatfaced
  8. Boaty McBoatfaces
  9. Boaty McBoatfacing
  10. boatyard
  11. boatyards

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Boaty McBoatface (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Boaty McBoatface.wav.

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