raft

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A flat structure, typically made of planks, logs, or barrels, that floats on water and is used for transport or as a platform for swimmers.
2. n. A flatbottom inflatable craft for floating or drifting on water: shooting the rapids in a rubber raft.
3. v. To convey on a raft.
4. v. To make into a raft.
5. v. To travel by raft.
6. n. Informal A great number, amount, or collection: "As the prairie dog goes, conservation biologists say, so may go a raft of other creatures” ( William K. Stevens).

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A beam; spar; rafter.
2. n. A sort of float or framework formed of logs, planks, or other pieces of timber fastened or lashed together side by side, for the convenience of transporting the constituent materials down rivers, across harbors, etc. Rafts of logs to be floated to a distant point are often very large, strongly constructed, and carry huts for the numerous men required to manage them. Those of the Rhine are sometimes 400 or 500 feet long, with 200 or more hands. A cigar-shaped raft of large logs, 560 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 35 feet deep, was lost in December, 1887, under towage by sea from Nova Scotia to New York; but other large rafts have been successfully transported.
3. n. A structure similarly formed of any materials for the floating or transportation of persons or things. In cases of shipwreck, planks, spars, barrels, etc., are often hastily lashed together to form a raft for escape. In passenger-vessels life-rafts frequently form part of the permanent equipment. See life-raft.
4. n. An accumulation of driftwood from fallen trees in a river, lodged and compacted so as to form a permanent obstruction. Rafts of this kind exist or have existed in the Mississippi and other rivers of the western United States, the largest ever formed being that of the Red River, which during many years completely blocked the channel for 45 miles.
5. n. A conglomeration of eggs of some animals, as certain insects and mollusks, fastened together and forming a. mass; a float. See cut under Ianthina.
6. To transport or float on a raft.
7. To make a raft of; form into a raft.
8. To manage a raft; work upon a raft or rafts; travel by raft.
9. n. A miscellaneous collection or heap; a promiscuous lot: used slightingly: as, a raft of papers; a whole raft of things to be attended to.
10. n. A damp fusty smell.
11. n. An obsolete preterit and past participle of reave.

Wiktionary

1. n. A flat structure made of planks, barrels etc., that floats on water, and is used for transport, emergencies or a platform for swimmers.
2. n. A flat-bottomed inflatable craft for floating or drifting on water.
3. n. A thick crowd of seabirds or sea mammals.
4. v. transitive to convey on a raft
5. v. transitive to make into a raft
6. v. intransitive to travel by raft
7. n. A large (but unspecified) number, a lot.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. imp. & p. p. of reave.
2. n. A collection of logs, boards, pieces of timber, or the like, fastened together, either for their own collective conveyance on the water, or to serve as a support in conveying other things; a float.
3. n. U.S. A collection of logs, fallen trees, etc. (such as is formed in some Western rivers of the United States), which obstructs navigation.
4. n. Slang, U. S. A large collection of people or things taken indiscriminately.
5. v. To transport on a raft, or in the form of raft; to make into a raft.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. make into a raft
2. n. a flat float (usually made of logs or planks) that can be used for transport or as a platform for swimmers
3. v. transport on a raft
4. v. travel by raft in water
5. n. (often followed by `of') a large number or amount or extent