English Explanatory Dictionary

floater

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A person who floats.
  2. A person who physically floats in a gas or liquid.
  3. A corpse floating in a body of water.
  4. A person without a fixed or lasting affiliation, position, or role.
  5. A person who frequently changes where they live; a drifter, a vagrant.
  6. A person who frequently changes employment.
  7. An employee of an organization who does not have fixed tasks to do but fills in wherever needed, usually when someone else is away; also, a short-term employee; a temporary, a temp.
  8. An "extra" (male) guest at a party who is asked by the host to entertain the other (often female) guests.
  9. A person who attaches themselves to a group of people, and who repeatedly shows up at group activities even though this is undesired by the group; a hanger-on.
  10. A voter who shifts their allegiance from one political party to another, especially (US) one whose vote can be illegally purchased.
  11. A person who votes illegally in various electoral districts or polling places, either under a false voter registration or under the name of a properly registered voter who has not yet voted.
  12. A person, such as a delegate to a convention or a member of a legislature, who represents an irregular constituency, such as one formed by a union of the voters of two counties neither of which has a number sufficient to be allowed one (or an extra) representative of its own.

Pronunciation

/ˈfləʊtə/ /ˈfloʊtəɹ/ [-ɾəɹ] En-au-floater.oga

Word forms

floater floaters

Etymology

From float + -er (suffix forming agent nouns). Compare Old English flota (“boat, ship", also "sailor, pirate”, literally “floater”), whence Middle English flote (“a fleet of ships", also, "a float, flotation device”).

Synonyms

bum stiff casual clochard derelict dero down-and-out down-and-outer drifter epithite floater gadling hobo Jack out of doors knight of the road landleaper landloper landlouper nomad paker palliard pike piker ranger rogue rolling stone rough sleeper scatterling skelder skell stroller stumblebum swagman swaggie toerag tramp truant vagabond vagrant wanderer waif yagger musca volitans blunder false move false step stumble aberration bloomer blooper boner boo-boo break clanger cock-up error fault faux pas flub fluff

Related words

mote

Derived words

ark-floater cob-floater lightwood-knot floater pie floater

Translations

Finnish: kelluja Finnish: paikanvaihtaja Finnish: kelluva esine Finnish: leijuri
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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