PT boat

American

noun

U.S. Military.

a small, fast, lightly armed, unarmored, and highly maneuverable boat used chiefly for torpedoing enemy shipping.

PT boat British

noun

patrol torpedo boat, the former US term for an MTB Compare MTB

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of PT boat

1940–45; p(atrol) t(orpedo)

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.

Shattering the stillness of a winter morning, the car’s cold-start cycling sounds like someone is docking a PT boat at the curb.

From The Wall Street Journal

A PT boat picked the men up just after midnight on August 8, six days after PT-109 was destroyed.

From Literature

It’s the shift from battleships to PT boats, from handmade suits to off-the-rack ones.

From MarketWatch

If the federal agency pivots at a battleship’s pace after each change of administration, “the states are kind of like PT boats that can zip in and out.”

From Washington Post

North Vietnamese PT boats fought back and had “mistaken Maddox for a South Vietnamese escort vessel,” according to a report.

From New York Times

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023