Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Canada & New England Nautical A long, light, flatbottom boat with a sharply pointed bow and stern.
- n. South Atlantic & Gulf States Nautical A small, light, flatbottom rowboat.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A light boat for river navigation, long in proportion to its breadth, and wider in the middle than at the ends.
- n. A pontoon of a floating bridge.
Wiktionary
- n. A small, flat-bottomed type of boat.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A boat; esp. a flat-bottomed, clumsy boat used on the Canadian lakes and rivers.
Etymologies
- Borrowing from French bateau (Wiktionary)
- Canadian and Louisiana French, from French, boat, from Old French batel, from Old English bāt; see bheid- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“A boat neck - also known as a bateau neck - refers to a wide neckline that runs horizontally, front and back, almost to the shoulders.”
“The modern 'bateau' is to be found only among keeled sailing craft.”
“The common punt is the best known form of it; the dory by far the handiest all round; the cargo barge the biggest; and the old-fashioned 'bateau' the most characteristically Canadian.”
“A moment more, and -- as he saw Sandy step out of the "bateau" with the boy, now sobbing feebly, in his arms -- he knew that his vengeance had been made for ever impossible.”
“The young man clung rather faintly to the supporting planks, as if he had overstrained himself; and two or three hands, who had already shoved off a "bateau," pushed out and picked him up with his burden.”
“Then canoe and bateau answered to the swift current of the Mackenzie, and they plunged into the Great Barren Ground.”
“A day came when Leclère gathered his dogs together and floated down in a bateau to Forty Mile, and on to the Porcupine, where he took a commission from the P.C. Company, and went exploring for the better part of a year.”
“The name of this friendly looking restaurant, is taken from the title of a sombre poem “Le bateau ivre”.”
““Le bateau ivre” is a poem written by Arthur Rimbault in 1872, about a drunken boat carrying Flemish wheat or English cotton, no longer pulled by ropes and floating down impassible rivers, running into the furious breakers of the sea, dancing on the waves, lighter than a cork, bathing in the Poem of the Sea, nacrous waves, silver suns ... piercing the red skies …”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bateau’.
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Out to Sea
If I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat.boat, ship, skiff, barge, canoe, catamaran, yacht, scow, lifeboat, launch, ketch, dory and 303 more...
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Maineisms
Some of these were taken from older literature and have fallen out of use in the past few decades, but many are still used today in the same way they were used a century ago. By no means a compreh...
Yankeedom, wizzled, wing and wing, wickie-up, whiffletree, weewaw, wangan, wainy, upstair, twice-laid, tunket, trig and 136 more...
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Learned (or Encountered) in Reading
I have a list for words learned from Newsweek; here's where I keep all the stuff from other shit I read.
Except when I'm looking stuff up and find new words that way. Those go on their...cellie, laminectomy, mridangam, terroir, hypospadias, crus, corpora cavernosa, crura, uretheral meatus, bartholin's gland, coloquintida, colopexy and 921 more...
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...another list...
I've no idea where I got this page full of words, but whatever it is, I want to find it again. May have duplicate words from other lists.
bicameral, aphelion, dirigible, parhelion, flocculus, vernier, corticate, oxalis, pandanus, calabash, plumbago, jonquil and 217 more...
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the shipwright
Floating and water vessels of all sorts.
mothership, frigate, xebec, ship-of-the-line, sloop, schooner, cutter, clipper, coracle, skiff, dhow, junk and 40 more...
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I'm -Eau -Que You're -Eau -Que
communique, applique, risque, bandeau, bateau, beau, bordereau, bureau, chapeau, chateau, cointreau, coteau and 23 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for bateau.
chained_bear "The previous day Jones had discovered two Union cavalrymen lurking near his little bateau at Pope's Creek."
--James L. Swanson, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, 179 May 30, 2008