Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use raft in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Raft means a flat-bottomed craft able to float and drift on water, used for transport or as a waterborne platform. Example: “By the third day on the raft, we had to ration our water.”

Examples of raft by meaning

nounA 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

nounAny flattish thing, usually wooden, used in a similar fashion.

  • 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

nounA thick crowd of aquatic birds, particularly a group floating on the surface of the water.

  • 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...
  • 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

nounA 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
  • 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

nounA 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
  • There are monkeys, sloths, macaws, parrots, pigeons, toucans, and many other wood-loving creatures; herons, screamers, jacanas, and jabiru storks in the marshes, capybaras on the shores, and rafts of crocodiles on the playas.1921 October, Frank M. Chapman, “Over the Andes to Bogota”, in The National Geographic Magazine, page 373

verbTo 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...

verbTo 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

nounA large (but unspecified) number, a lot.

  • The goals and entertainment dried up after the break as Wales made a raft of substitutions but, with more meaningful challenges to come, a capacity crowd at the Stok Racecourse appreciated the bigger picture with Croatia on the horizon.2023 October 11, Dafydd Pritchard, “Wales 4-0 Gibraltar”, in BBC Sport

More sentences with raft

  • By the third day on the raft, we had to ration our water.From the entry ration
  • Huck Finn poled that raft southward down the Mississippi because going northward against the current was too much work.From the entry pole
  • The home-made raft was a lash-up, but it floated.From the entry lash-up
  • The river is floatable on a raft.From the entry floatable
  • Luckily for us J company picked us up in their hack — two snowmobiles with a big inflatable raft strapped between them.From the entry hack
  • The raft got stuck in midstream.From the entry in midstream
  • They had already found one life raft and lowered the rescue swimmer into the freezing ocean.2025 October 21, Rose George, “‘I knew in my head we were dying’: the last voyage of the Scandies Rose”, in The Guardian. From the entry rescue swimmer
  • Sometimes, I also used the night to set off a bamboo raft from Xiamen harbor.2022 February, Yongming Chen, Zhiyu Zhang, “Practicing the Cold War: What Communism Meant for Xiamen Fishermen/Women in the 1950s and…. From the entry Erdan
  • Their plastic rafts, which used to last more than five years, are now lasting less than one.2021, Sam Galliford, Rockfall. From the entry polypipe
  • Instead of a raft floating down the Mississip,' it'll be a clickity clack across the desert.2010, Jerome Peterson, Thumb Flagging, page 162. From the entry clickity
  • A doughnut life raft popped up out of the ocean in front of him.1996, John Long, Close Shaves: Classic Stories on the Edge, page 2. From the entry doughnut
  • "Guess I'll do some diving from the raft today," I said, pointedly, to Sonny.1989, Helen Harris Perlman, The Dancing Clock, and Other Childhood Memories, page 95. From the entry ish ka bibble
  • Then he took the report to Ta-teng⁴ Island on a rubber raft.1982, Nancy Ing, Winter Plum: Contemporary Chinese Fiction, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 90. From the entry Ta-teng
  • A raft of twigs stayed upon a stone, suddenly detached itself, and floated towards the culvert.1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished…. From the entry culvert
  • I hate work of any kind, and making a raft is hard work."1913, L. Frank Baum, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Chicago: The Reilly & Lee Co., published c. 1920, page 308. From the entry lazy
  • The earliest boat, so they say in Ireland, was a raft.1903, Country Life Illustrated, volume 13, page 544. From the entry corrach
  • Pukka has unveiled new plastic-free packaging for its range of hot pies, alongside a raft of recipe improvements.2020 January 15, Jules Scullyon, “Pukka debuts plastic-free packaging for pie portfolio”, in FoodBev. From the entry hot pie
  • Shared some road tales with a truck driver who joined us for skinheads on a raft and hit the road again.2006 May 7, MSeries, “RR: Buttys Brid Trip 300”, in uk.rec.cycling (Usenet). From the entry skinheads on a raft
  • A raft of long Icicles broken from the Eaves floats upon the pale contents of the great rustick Monteith.1997, Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon, New York: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 509. From the entry monteith
  • The rafts were made up of strings of logs about seventeen feet wide, held together by poles across them.1931, State University of Iowa. Bureau of Business Research, Iowa studies in business (issues 10-15, page 24). From the entry lockdown
  • Chinese state media has pressed pause on the US-bashing, releasing a raft of commentaries extolling the merits of resetting relations and working on co-operation.2023 November 15, Tessa Wong, “Xi Jinping arrives in US as his Chinese Dream sputters”, in BBC. From the entry press pause
  • The area navigable by anything other than a raft gradually shrank, and parts of the inland sea were converted into fish farms.2020 December 18, Steven Crook, “Highways and Byways: Disappeared sea and a side trip to hell”, in Taipei Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived…. From the entry waterbody
  • The couple, who were not named, took the raft trip in a natural park in Nanzhao county in northern Henan province, the report said.2015 June 8, Angela Meng, “'Tacky' Chinese boyfriend criticised for making river rafting staff salute girlfriend on her birthday”, in…. From the entry Nanzhao
  • As well as a raft of regular features, you can add text in muitiple fonts and turn photos into graphics or LOLtastic memes.2015 August, Katie Collins, “Apps of the Month”, in Wired, UK edition, London, page 035. From the entry LOLtastic
  • Maybe the dowdy recreational vehicle can be a vehicle of discovery, a cure for farsickness, a Huck Finn raft of escape for the middle-aged.2014, James B. Twitchell, Winnebago Nation: The RV in American Culture, Columbia University Press, →ISBN. From the entry farsickness
  • A wide beach with shops and restaurants nearby, it has refreshment kiosks, barbecue pits, lifeguards, swimming rafts, playgrounds, changing rooms, showers, and toilets.2006, “Hong Kong Beaches”, in The New York Times, Fodor's, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 19 Apr 2023, Travel. From the entry Shek O
  • When she and her sister were away at Williamsburg, Nancy and I were more like founderers on a raft adrift in an angry sea.1997, Kelly Joyce Neff, Dear Companion: The Inner Life of Martha Jefferson, page 92. From the entry angry
  • The Ride is a swift trip on a water raft through a jungle inhabited by stegosauri, parasaurolophi, dilophosauri, velociraptors and other life-size mechanical dinosaurs.1996 August 11, Associated Press, “Ride proves fascination with dinosaurs not extinct: Universal Studios Hollywood park is drawing mammoth…. From the entry parasaurolophus

Meaning of raft

  1. noun A flat-bottomed craft able to float and drift on water, used for transport or as a waterborne platform.
  2. noun Any flattish thing, usually wooden, used in a similar fashion.
  3. noun A thick crowd of aquatic birds, particularly a group floating on the surface of the water.

Full definition of raft

Questions about raft in a sentence

How do you use raft in a sentence?
Raft is used as a noun and verb. For example: “By the third day on the raft, we had to ration our water.”
What is a short sentence with raft?
“The raft got stuck in midstream.”
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.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: raft (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use raft in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/raft. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.