Word.ws English Dictionary

fleet in being

fleet in being noun: a naval fleet which exerts an influence while remaining in port.

Noun

fleet in being (plural fleets in being)

  1. (countable) A naval fleet which exerts an influence while remaining in port.
    • In point of fact command of the sea and a fleet in being are mutually exclusive terms.1895, “The Armada”, in The Quarterly Review, volume 182, number 363, John Murray, page 6
    • But even for that navy, with its strong tradition of offensive action, there were occasions when the fleet-in-being strategy was prudent and effective.1994, Colin S. Gray, The Navy in the Post-Cold War World: The Uses and Value of Strategic Sea Power, page 85

Forms of fleet in being

pluralfleets in being
alternative formfleet-in-being

Origin of fleet in being

First used in 1690 by British Admiral Arthur Herbert, 1st Earl of Torrington, in defending his strategy of keeping his fleet in port until reinforcements arrived, rather than engaging with the superior French force.

Questions about fleet in being

What does fleet in being mean?
Fleet in being means a naval fleet which exerts an influence while remaining in port.
What part of speech is fleet in being?
Fleet in being is a noun.
What is the plural of fleet in being?
The plural of fleet in being is fleets in being.

Words near fleet in being in the dictionary

  1. fleet captain
  2. fleet captains
  3. fleet carrier
  4. fleet carriers
  5. fleet footed
  6. fleet in being
  7. fleet landing
  8. fleet landings
  9. fleet leader
  10. fleet leaders
  11. Fleet marriage

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fleet in being (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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