raft
UK/ɹɑːft//ɹæft/
raft noun: a flat-bottomed craft able to float and drift on water, used for transport or as a waterborne platform. Also the simple past and past participle of reave.
Noun (1)
raft (plural rafts)
- A flat-bottomed craft able to float and drift on water, used for transport or as a waterborne platform.
- They floated down the river on an inflatable raft
- Any flattish thing, usually wooden, used in a similar fashion.
- When George Stephenson built the Liverpool & Manchester Railway he encountered the same difficulty at Chat Moss and solved the problem by constructing a kind of raft made of brushwood that more or less floated on the surface of the bog. On this he placed as much firm soil as his raft could carry...1934 February, G. W. Tripp, “How Nature Harasses the Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 79
- Even though in a way you let him freeze to death in the water, because the way I see it...
I agree. Y'know, I think he actually could have fitted on that bit of door.
There was plenty of room on the raft.
I know. I know, I know.2016 February 2, Kate Winslet et al., Jimmy Kimmel Live!
- A thick crowd of aquatic birds, particularly a group floating on the surface of the water.
- Pelicans, bills stuck forward, would gather in small rafts to move along in comical formation, before diving in unison […]2010, John Roome, A Persistent Passage, page 140
- Occasionally, there was a large black raft of birds far out at sea.2025, Eduard Drost, Birds on the Brink: South Africa’s Threatened Bird Species and Those Working to Save Them, Penguin Random House South Africa
- A group of aquatic mammals, especially otters and especially when visible on the surface of the water.
- A raft of otters at rest in the river.2019, Jennifer McCartney, The Little Book of Otter Philosophy, HarperCollins Publishers
- Two score and more of young, able-bodied men they were, to be sure, strong enough, I dare say, to tow a raft of whales alongside in any latitude.1852 May, H. Milnor Knapp, “The Master's Mate's Yarn”, in Graham's Magazine, page 166
- A group of alligators or crocodiles, especially when floating in water with their backs visible above the surface.
- She even pointed out a bank where a raft of crocodiles lay dozing, baking their scaly backs in the sun.2010, Esther Friesner, Sphinx's Queen, Random House Children's Books
- navigation was obstructed by a raft of alligators1872 October 4, S. Compton Smith, “An Alligator Story”, in The American Scrap Book and Magazine of United States Literature, volume 2, page 379
- A collection of logs, fallen trees, etc. which obstructs navigation in a river.
- A slice of toast.
- A square array of sensors forming part of a large telescope.
- A mass of congealed solids that forms on a consommé because of the protein in the egg white.
Verb
raft (third-person singular simple present rafts, present participle rafting, simple past and past participle rafted)
- To convey on a raft.
- For timber I imported pine logs from Manchuria, rafted them two hundred miles down the Yalu River, three hundred miles over the Yellow Sea, and twenty miles up the Tatung River, where a thirty-five-foot tide lifted the consignment to Pyongyang.1969, Stella Parker Peterson, “Growing Pains”, in It Came in Handy, Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 83
- To make into a raft.
- To travel by raft.
- To dock (toolbars, etc.) so that they share horizontal or vertical space.
- The ToolStripContainer provides built-in rafting and docking of ToolStrip, MenuStrip, and StatusStrip controls.2007, Dinesh Maidasani, Straight to the Point - Visual Basic 2005, page 11
Noun (2)
raft (plural rafts)
- A large (but unspecified) number, a lot.
- Pomeroy asked me a raft of factual-type questions (how old were you when you began menstruating? did you ever see your parents having intercourse? did you have many friends in high school? how was your relationship with your father?). It seemed he had a written questionnaire & checked off answers...1977-1980, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure
- Among those arrested was the grand master himself, Jacques de Molay, who found himself facing a raft of charges based on the specious evidence of former knights [...].2007, Edwin Mullins, The Popes of Avignon, Blue Bridge, published 2008, page 31
Proper noun capitalized: Raft
Raft
Also used as
raft is also the simple past and past participle of reave.
raft meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
raft in Hindi
- flat, floating structure
- बेड़ा beṛā
raft in Tamil
- ராஃப்ட், தெப்பம், ராஃப்ட் செய்ய
raft in Marathi
- राफ्ट, तराफा, राफ्ट करण्यासाठी
raft in Urdu
- flat, floating structure
- بیڑا beṛā
More languagesFewer languages
- raft in Bengali
- ভেলা bhela
- raft in Telugu
- తెప్ప teppa
- raft in Malayalam
- റാഫ്റ്റ്, റാഫറ്റ്
- raft in Kannada
- ರಾಫ್ಟ್, ತೆಪ್ಪ
- raft in Punjabi
- ਬੇੜਾ beṛā
- raft in Gujarati
- રાફ્ટ
- raft in Odia
- ରାଫ୍ଟ, ରଫ୍ଟ, ରାଫ୍ଟ୍
- raft in Assamese
- ভূৰ bhur, ভেল bhel
- raft in Nepali
- राफ्ट, रफ्ट, राफ्ट गर्न
- raft in Pashto
- سل sal
- raft in Tagalog
- lamo
- raft in Arabic
- طَوْف ṭawf, رَمَث ramaṯ, قَارِب مَطَّاطِيّ qārib maṭṭāṭiyy
- raft in Malay
- rakit
- raft in Indonesian
- rakit
- raft in Thai
- แพ pɛɛ
- raft in Vietnamese
- bè
- raft in Myanmar
- ဖောင် hpaung
Examples of raft in a sentence
- On this he placed as much firm soil as his raft could carry, when the operation was repeated, the first raft being thereby sunk with its load of solid earth, which was not displaced.1934 February, G. W. Tripp, “How Nature Harasses the Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 79:
- Margaret River itself, although it seems to be Scott River by Prevelly, flows into the Indian Ocean and creates a sandbank, where sat a raft of terns and gulls.2010, Andy Gibb, The Honeyeaters' Tree, page 32:
- News of Smith's discovery of the South Shetland Islands, and of the rafts of seals along their shores, spread quickly.2015, Kenneth J. Panton, Historical Dictionary of the British Empire, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, page 497:
- a raft of otters was feeding at the depth of three hundred feet (50 fathoms)1979, Jane H. Bailey, Sea Otter, El Moro Publications:
Synonyms of raft
Forms of raft
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | rafts |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | rafts |
| present participle | rafting |
| past participle | rafted |
| past | rafted |
Origin of raft
Late Middle English, of North Germanic origin, from West Old Norse raptr, from Proto-Germanic *raf-tra-, from Proto-Indo-European *rap-tro-, from *rep- (“stake, beam”). See also Norwegian raft (“beam, rafter”), Danish raft (“thin pole”). Compare also Albanian trap (“raft, ferry”).
Alteration of raff.
Words formed from raft
Phrases with raft
Words that rhyme with raft
Questions about raft
- What does raft mean?
- Raft means a flat-bottomed craft able to float and drift on water, used for transport or as a waterborne platform.
- What is raft in Hindi?
- Raft in Hindi is बेड़ा (beṛā). See Raft meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use raft in a sentence?
- On this he placed as much firm soil as his raft could carry, when the operation was repeated, the first raft being thereby sunk with its load of solid earth, which was not displaced.
- What part of speech is raft?
- Raft can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce raft?
- Raft is pronounced /ɹɑːft/ (UK).
- What is the plural of raft?
- The plural of raft is rafts.
Words near raft in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: raft (page history and authors); Raft (page history and authors); raft (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); raft (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); raft (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); raft (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); raft (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); raft (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); raft (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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-raft.ogg.
Cite this entry: “raft.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/raft. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.