Great God of VVaters [i.e.,Neptune], vvhoſe extended Svvay / Is next to his, vvhom Heav'n and Earth obey: / Let not the Suit ofVenus thee diſpleaſe, / Pity theFloaters on th'Ionian Seas.
2017 September 18, E. J. Stauffer, chapter3, inThe Drowning, Bloomington, Ind.:Archway Publishing,→ISBN:
A dock worker saw him floating against a dock pier and called the police. Condition of the body they thought afloater that had been hit by a boat and cut by the prop.
About an hour later a ration lorry found them, and the men were woken again, this time to a good meal of bully stew andfloaters – suet dumplings – followed by cold rice pudding with jam.
2017 September 1, Mansi Mahendru, “How to Dress Up during Monsoon: Six Tips”, in Divesh Nath, editor,Woman’s Era, volume44, number1050, New Delhi: Paresh Nath,Delhi Press,→ISSN,→OCLC,page16, columns1–2:
Replace your leather sandals with rubber slippers, sandals orfloaters. They don't soak water well and why in this world would you want to spoil your expensive leather footwear in puddles?
(figurative) A thing which moves fromplace to place, as if floating.
Suddenly, for no reason, in the middle of the night, or even in the middle of the jolliest party, she would remember an ancientfloater—just like that,à propos de bottes—would remember and be overcome by a feeling of self-reproach and retrospective shame.[…] One could do one's best; but one could never really persuade oneself that thefloater hadn't happened. Imagination might struggle to annihilate the odious memory; but it never had power to win a decisive victory.
He greeted William with cordiality. "Ah, Boot, how are you? Don't think I've had the pleasure before. Know your work well of course. Sit down. Have a cigarette or"—had he made afloater?—"or do you prefer yourchurchwarden?"
One prisoner came to me and asked if I had anything to read. As I hadn’t, he said he would bring me some reading. The next day he arrived with two serious books under his shirt. ‘Floaters’ [i.e. unofficially circulated books] had also come into the prison: you could either find them in the library, or they would be given to someone else to keep away from the screws—they were never openly visible.
The words in brackets are in the original text.
2000 November, Julian Broadhead, interviewer, quotingNoel “Razor” Smith, “The Prison Writing Interview”, in Julian Broadhead, Laura Kerr, editors,Prison Writing 2001: A Collection of Fact, Fiction and Verse, number15, Winchester, Hampshire: Waterside Press,→ISBN,page 9:
His [Gordon Frank Newman’s] books were ‘floaters’, banned by the borstal, but copies were smuggled in and from wing to wing. We used to rip the covers off them cos if you got caught with one it was seven days block.
[Rule] 477.(1) The boxer for a game of triple penny two-up, or a floor manager, may declare a spin invalid if the spin is afloater.[…] [Rule 477.](6) In this section—"floater" means a spin in which at least 1 of the coins does not turn over in the air at least once.
["]Suppose I should tell you that there's a permanent order in the sheriff's office, left there by the old sheriff, that if I ever use your name or admit I'm your wife I'll get afloater out of the county and out of the state. Does that tempt you?" / "Tempt me to do what?" / "To get me floated and take all the money."
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—seehanger-on
voter who shifts their allegiance from one political party to another
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, Oxford:Oxford University Press, December 2023;“floater,n.”, inLexico,Dictionary.com;Oxford University Press,2019–2022.
floater (ophthalmology) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia