floater

English
WOTD – 27 March 2024

Etymology
A duck mussel (Anodonta anatina), also known as a floater (sense 2.1.1).
A simulated image of floaters (sense 2.1.4) in the eye seen against a blue sky.
The Latvian basketballer Kristaps Porziņģis playing a floater (sense 2.1.5).
A floater (sense 2.1.6) in Australian cuisine—a meat pie served floating in a bowl of thick green pea soup.

From float +‎ -er (suffix forming agent nouns).[1]

Pronunciation
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈfləʊtə/
  • (General American) IPA(key): /ˈfloʊtəɹ/, [-ɾəɹ]
  • Audio (AU)(file)
  • Rhymes: -əʊtə(ɹ)
  • Hyphenation: float‧er

Noun

floater (plural floaters)

  1. A person who floats.
    1. A person who physically floats in a gas or liquid.
      1. (law enforcement, slang) A corpse floating in a body of water.
        • 2017 September 18, E. J. Stauffer, chapter 3, in The 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 a floater that had been hit by a boat and cut by the prop.
    2. (figurative) A person without a fixed or lasting affiliation, position, or role.
      1. A person who frequently changes where they live; a drifter, a vagrant.
        Synonyms: see Thesaurus:vagabond
      2. A person who frequently changes employment.
      3. 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.
      4. An "extra" (male) guest at a party who is asked by the host to entertain the other (often female) guests.
      5. (slang) 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.
      6. (politics)
        1. A voter who shifts their allegiance from one political party to another, especially (US) one whose vote can be illegally purchased.
        2. (US) 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.
        3. (US) 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.
      7. (sports) A player not affiliated with a team.
  2. A thing which floats.
    1. A thing which physically floats in a gas or liquid.
      1. A river mussel of the genus Anodonta; an anodon.
      2. A small suet dumpling put into soup.
        • 2009, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, chapter 9, in The Fallen Kings ([The Morland] Dynasty; 32), London: Sphere, published 2010, →ISBN, page 204:
          About an hour later a ration lorry found them, and the men were woken again, this time to a good meal of bully stew and floaters – suet dumplings – followed by cold rice pudding with jam.
      3. (vulgar) A piece of faeces which floats.
        He left a floater in the toilet.
      4. (ophthalmology) A threadlike speck in the visual field which seems to move, possibly caused by degeneration of the vitreous humour of the eye.
        Synonym: musca volitans
      5. (sports) A ball that moves lightly through the air, as if floating; specifically (basketball), an early layup taken by a player moving towards the rim where, upon release, the ball floats in the air over the top of a defender before dropping softly into the hoop.
        • 2014, Tarrence Garrison, Basketball Essentials: Learn, Improve, Dominate, [Scotts Valley, Calif.]: [CreateSpace], →ISBN:
          The floater is a high arcing shot that is commonly used to get the ball over taller defenders in the paint.
      6. (Australia) Short for pie floater (“a meat pie served floating in a bowl of thick green pea soup”).
      7. (India) A waterproof sandal.
        • 2017 September 1, Mansi Mahendru, “How to Dress Up during Monsoon: Six Tips”, in Divesh Nath, editor, Woman’s Era, volume 44, number 1050, New Delhi: Paresh Nath, Delhi Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 16, columns 1–2:
          Replace your leather sandals with rubber slippers, sandals or floaters. They don't soak water well and why in this world would you want to spoil your expensive leather footwear in puddles?
    2. (figurative) A thing which moves from place to place, as if floating.
      1. (slang, dated) A mistake or misstep; a faux pas.
        Synonyms: blunder, false move, false step, stumble; see also Thesaurus:error
        • 1925, Aldous Huxley, chapter I, in Those Barren Leaves […], London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC, part I (An Evening at Mrs. Aldwinkle’s), page 9:
          Suddenly, for no reason, in the middle of the night, or even in the middle of the jolliest party, she would remember an ancient floater—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 the floater hadn't happened. Imagination might struggle to annihilate the odious memory; but it never had power to win a decisive victory.
        • 1938 May, Evelyn Waugh, chapter 2, in Scoop: A Novel about Journalists, uniform edition, London: Chapman & Hall, published 1948 (1951 printing), →OCLC, book I (The Stitch Service), section 3, page 26:
          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 a floater?—"or do you prefer your churchwarden?"
        • 1949 September 9, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter 7, in The Mating Season, Harmondsworth, Middlesex [London]: Penguin Books, published 1957, →OCLC, page 72:
          I must let her know I'm here and put her in touch with the general situation so she will be warned against making any floaters.
      2. (finance) Short for floating rate bond.
      3. (insurance) An insurance policy covering movable property at more than one location or which may be in transit.
      4. (prison slang) A book circulated between prisoners which is not part of the official prison library.
        • 1991, Michael Tippett, “The Heart’s Assurance”, in Those Twentieth Century Blues: An Autobiography, London: Hutchinson, →ISBN, page 143:
          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, quoting Noel “Razor” Smith, “The Prison Writing Interview”, in Julian Broadhead, Laura Kerr, editors, Prison Writing 2001: A Collection of Fact, Fiction and Verse, number 15, 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.
      5. (surfing) A manoeuvre in which a surfer transitions above the unbroken face of a wave on to the lip, or on top of the breaking section of the wave.
      6. (two-up) A coin which does not spin when thrown in the air.
        • 1998 July 27, Casino Gaming Amendment Rule (No. 2) 1998 (Subordinate Legislation 1998 No. 233)‎, [Brisbane, Qld.]: Queensland Government, archived from the original on 2004-07-30, pages 7–8:
          [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 a floater. […] [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.
          This rule amended the Casino Gaming Rules 1985.
      7. (US, law) A criminal sentence which is suspended so long as the convicted person leaves an area.
        • 1952 September 19, John Steinbeck, chapter 31, in East of Eden, New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press, →OCLC, book 3, section 1, page 383:
          ["]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 a floater 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."

Derived terms

Translations
corpse floating in a body of water
person who frequently changes where they live — see drifter,‎ vagrant
short-term employee — see temporary
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 — see hanger-on
river mussel of the genus Anodonta — see anodon
short for pie floater — see pie floater
mistake or misstep — see mistake,‎ misstep
criminal sentence which is suspended so long as the convicted person leaves an area — see suspended sentence

See also
  • (threadlike speck in the visual field): mote

References
  1. “floater, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, December 2023; “floater, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

Anagrams
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