raft

plural rafts

1. 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

2. broadlyAny flattish thing, usually wooden, used in a similar fashion.

   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!

   1 more example

   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, 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

3. collectiveA 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 Africa

   2 more examples

   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

   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

   1. broadlycollectiveA 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

      4 more examples

      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

      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

      A raft of sea lions playing "king of the buoy".

      1999 April, J. Michael Hemsley, Kathleen C. O'Neil and LTJG Lee H. Allison, USCG, “Evicting Sea Lions”, in Mariners Weather Log, U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Data and Information Service, page 25

   2. collectiveA group of alligators or crocodiles, especially when floating in water with their backs visible above the surface.

      navigation was obstructed by a raft of alligators

      1872 October 4, S. Compton Smith, “An Alligator Story”, in The American Scrap Book and Magazine of United States Literature, volume 2, page 379

      2 more examples

      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 28, Frank M. Chapman, “Over the Andes to Bogota”, in The National Geographic Magazine, page 373

      Synonyms: congregation

4. USA collection of logs, fallen trees, etc. which obstructs navigation in a river.
5. USslangwhen ordering foodA slice of toast.
6. A square array of sensors forming part of a large telescope.
7. cookingA mass of congealed solids that forms on a consommé because of the protein in the egg white.

present singular third person rafts · participle present rafting · participle past rafted · past rafted

1. transitiveTo 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

2. transitiveTo make into a raft.
3. intransitiveTo travel by raft.
4. computingTo 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

plural rafts

1. A large (but unspecified) number, a lot.

   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

   2 more examples

   1977-1980, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure 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 as I have them.

   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

1. archaicparticiplepastsimple past and past participle of reave

   Colin Clout raft me of his brother

   1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], “August. Ægloga Octaua.”, in The Shepheardes Calender: […], London: […] Hugh Singleton, […], →OCLC

1. abbreviationacronymcomputerAcronym of reliable, replicated, redundant, and fault-tolerant, a consensus algorithm.

   For leader election only the reachable manager nodes are included for Raft consensus.

   2017, Deepak Vohra, Docker Management Design Patterns: Swarm Mode on Amazon Web Services, Apress, →ISBN, page 12