fleets

Noun

fleet (plural fleets)

1. (collective) A group of vessels or vehicles, generally operating in a unified way or traveling together.
   • A fleet of warships is heading this way.
   1. (collective) The vehicles commercially owned by a person, company or agency.
      • She owns a fleet of private medical transport vans.
   2. (collective) A number of vessels in company, especially war vessels; the vessels commanded by a single officer; also, the collective naval force of a country, etc.
      • We must invest in our fleet for our national security.
   3. (British-Royal-Navy, collective) Any command of vessels exceeding a squadron in size, or a rear admiral's command, composed of five sail-of-the-line, with any number of smaller vessels.
2. (collective) A large, coordinated group of people.
   • And after the past few days, in which a fleet of Republicans and the president himself have utilized Jews as human shields for racist rhetoric, the Jews are tired, tired, tired of being used as defenses against naked racism, tired of being used to justify conditions at detention camps. Just plain...2019 July 17, Talia Lavin, “When Non-Jews Wield Anti-Semitism as Political Shield”, in GQ
3. Any group of associated items.
   • This is especially true in distributed printing environments, where a fleet of printers is shared by users on a network.2004, Jim Hoskins, Building an on Demand Computing Environment with IBM

See all 30 meanings of fleet