buoy

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A float moored in water to mark a location, warn of danger, or indicate a navigational channel.
2. n. A life buoy.
3. v. To keep afloat or aloft: a glider buoyed by air currents.
4. v. To maintain at a high level; support: "the persistent ... takeover speculation, which has buoyed up the shares of banks” ( Financial Times).
5. v. To hearten or inspire; uplift: "buoyed up by the team spirit and the pride of the older generation back at home” ( Judith Martin).
6. v. To mark with or as if with a buoy.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A float fixed at a certain place to show the position of objects beneath the water, as shoals, rocks, etc., to mark out a channel, and the like Buoys are of various shapes and kinds, according to the purposes they are intended to serve: as, can-buoys, made of sheet-iron in the form of the frustum of a cone; spar-buoys, made of a spar, which is anchored by one end; bell-buoys, surmounted by a bell, which is made to sound by the action of the waves; whistling-buoys, fitted with an apparatus by which air compressed by the movement of the waves is made to escape through a whistle, and thus indicate the situation of the buoy, etc. In the waters of the United States the following system of placing buoys as aids to navigation is prescribed by law: Red buoys mark the starboard or right-hand side of the channel coming from seaward, and black the port or left-hand side; mid-channel dangers and obstructions are marked with buoys having black and red transverse stripes, and mid-channel buoys marking the fairway have longitudinal black and white stripes; buoys marking sunken wrecks are painted green. The starboard and port buoys are numbered from the seaward end of the channel, the black bearing the odd and the red the even numbers.
2. n. A buoyant object designed to be thrown from a vessel to assist a person who has fallen into the water to keep himself afloat; a life-buoy. The life-buoy now in common use in the United States navy consists of two hollow copper vessels, connected by a framework and having between them an upright pole, weighted at the bottom and surmounted by a brass box containing a port-fire. This machine is hung over the stern of the vessel, and can be dropped by means of a trigger. At night the burning of the port-fire serves to point out its position. See also cut under breeches-buoy.
3. To support by a buoy or as by a buoy; keep afloat in a fluid; bear up or keep from sinking in a fluid, as in water or air: generally with up.
4. Figuratively, to support or sustain in any sense; especially, to sustain mentally; keep from falling into despondency or discouragement: generally with up.
5. To fix buoys in as a direction to mariners: as, to buoy or to buoy off a channel.
6. To float; rise by reason of lightness.

Wiktionary

1. n. nautical A float moored in water to mark a location, warn of danger, or indicate a navigational channel.
2. n. A life-buoy.
3. v. transitive To keep afloat or aloft.
4. v. transitive To support or maintain at a high level.
5. v. transitive To mark with a buoy.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Naut.) A float; esp. a floating object moored to the bottom, to mark a channel or to point out the position of something beneath the water, as an anchor, shoal, rock, etc.
2. v. To keep from sinking in a fluid, as in water or air; to keep afloat; -- with up.
3. v. To support or sustain; to preserve from sinking into ruin or despondency.
4. v. To fix buoys to; to mark by a buoy or by buoys.
5. v. To float; to rise like a buoy.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. bright-colored; a float attached by rope to the seabed to mark channels in a harbor or underwater hazards
2. v. float on the surface of water
3. v. keep afloat
4. v. mark with a buoy