floater
floaters
Anything that can float on the surface of water is a floater. When you relax in a pool, floating on your back, you're a floater.
If you throw pennies in the water, they'll sink, but a dollar bill will be a floater, as are dragonflies on a lake's surface and beach balls bobbing in the surf. A completely different floater is a tiny speck that seems to float across your vision, a small, nearly-translucent deposit on your eyeball of the sort that becomes fairly common as you get older. In US police slang, a floater is a body found in the water.
Definitions of floater
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an object that floats or is capable of floating
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types:
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berg, iceberg
a large mass of ice floating at sea; usually broken off of a polar glacier
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growler
a small iceberg or ice floe just large enough to be hazardous for shipping
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type of:
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object, physical object
a tangible and visible entity; an entity that can cast a shadow
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berg, iceberg
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a swimmer who floats in the water
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spots before the eyes caused by opaque cell fragments in the vitreous humor and lens“floaters seem to drift through the field of vision”
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synonyms:
musca volitans, muscae volitantes, spots
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type of:
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symptom
(medicine) any sensation or change in bodily function that is experienced by a patient and is associated with a particular disease
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symptom
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an employee who is reassigned from job to job as needed
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type of:
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employee
a worker who is hired to perform a job
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employee
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a wanderer who has no established residence or visible means of support
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types:
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beachcomber
a vagrant living on a beach
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sundowner
a tramp who habitually arrives at sundown
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bum, hobo, tramp
a disreputable vagrant
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dosser, street person
someone who sleeps in any convenient place
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type of:
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have-not, poor person
a person with few or no possessions
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bird of passage, roamer, rover, wanderer
someone who leads a wandering unsettled life
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a debt instrument with a variable interest rate tied to some other interest rate (e.g. the rate paid by T-bills)
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type of:
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certificate of indebtedness, debt instrument, obligation
a written promise to repay a debt
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certificate of indebtedness, debt instrument, obligation
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an insurance policy covering loss of movable property (e.g. jewelry) regardless of its location
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synonyms:
floating policy
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type of:
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insurance, insurance policy, policy
written contract or certificate of insurance
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insurance, insurance policy, policy
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a voter who votes illegally at different polling places in the same election
DISCLAIMER: These example sentences appear in various news sources and books to reflect the usage of the word ‘floater'.
Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Vocabulary.com or its editors.
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