dinghy
Americannoun
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any small boat designed as a tender or lifeboat, especially a small ship's boat, rowed, sailed, or driven by a motor.
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a boat used by warships, having four single-banked oars and a spritsail.
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any of various rowing or sailing boats used in sheltered waters along the Indian coasts to transport passengers and freight.
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an inflatable life raft.
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of dinghy
1785–95; < Bengali diṅgi, Hindi ḍiṅgī, diminutive of ḍiṅgā boat
Explanation
A long journey by sea requires a large ship, but if you’re out for an afternoon on the pond, you may want to take the dinghy, a small boat. A dinghy, pronounced "DING-ee," is a lifeboat found on board of a ship in case of emergency, but it can also be a rowboat used for fishing or just relaxing out on the water. The unusual spelling of this word reflects its exotic origins, in the Hindi word ḍiṅgī. Be sure to remember to include the silent “h” when you spell dinghy.
Vocabulary lists containing dinghy
Seas The Day: Words That Shore Are Beachy
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Vocabulary from news articles about rescued teenage sailor
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"I am heartbroken over the recent boat accident in unpredictable seas and high winds that caused by beloved Lynette to fall from our small dinghy near Elbow Cay in the Bahamas," he said.
From BBC ● Apr. 8, 2026
Russian rapper Yegor Krid dialed a friend as he relaxed on a floating dinghy in a music clip released last year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 1, 2026
The colonizers, four Chagossians aged 31 to 72, clambered aboard a dinghy and came ashore, waving British and American flags.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 19, 2026
Survivors told IOM that the rubber dinghy had departed at around 23:00 local time from al-Zawiya, west of Tripoli.
From BBC ● Feb. 9, 2026
I stare at the other dinghy, jammed with people in every available space.
From "Without Refuge" by Jane Mitchell
More than 3,000 people died in 2025 trying to reach the Canary Islands, often in makeshift dinghies, according to NGO Caminando Fronteras.
From BBC ● May 8, 2026
Yet Iran primarily sets mines using frogmen on small boats that resemble ordinary fishing vessels, an informal maritime militia of dinghies that is virtually impossible to identify and eliminate.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 12, 2026
Many of those arrived in the country illegally on small dinghies across the English Channel from France.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 17, 2025
Last year a BBC investigation exposed how Germany's used as a hub, by small-boat smugglers, to store dinghies that are then used for illegal English Channel crossings.
From BBC ● Oct. 24, 2025
Navy destroyer and two coast guard cutters had taken up positions among the usual flotilla of yachts, sailboats, launches, dinghies, and canoes assembling near the finish line.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
