Word.ws English Dictionary

disease boats

disease boats is the plural of disease boat.

Meaning of disease boat

Noun

disease boat (plural disease boats)

  1. (historical) In early societies, a boat, canoe, etc., in which community members suffering from a disease were exiled in the belief that the evil spirits of the disease would be carried away.
    • The loading of diseases into disease-boats, of sins onto scape-goats, the propitiation of the forces of nature by victims, human or animal, sacrifices, ceremonies of re-birth, eucharistic feasts, sexual communions, orgiastic celebrations of the common life, and a host of other things — all said...1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., page 165

Questions about disease boats

What is disease boats the plural of?
Disease boats is the plural of disease boat.

Words near disease boats in the dictionary

  1. disdrometry
  2. disdyakis triacontahedron
  3. Dise
  4. disease
  5. disease boat
  6. disease boats
  7. disease enhancement
  8. disease enhancements
  9. disease mongering
  10. disease of despair
  11. Disease X

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: disease boats (page history and authors); disease 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:

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