raft
1 Americannoun
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a more or less rigid floating platform made of buoyant material or materials.
an inflatable rubber raft.
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a collection of logs, planks, casks, etc., fastened together for floating on water.
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Building Trades. a slab of reinforced concrete providing a footing on yielding soil, usually for a whole building, so that the weight of the soil that would be displaced by the settlement of the building exceeds the weight of the building itself; mat.
verb (used with object)
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rafts,
present (3rd person singular)
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rafted,
past participle, past
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rafting
present participle
-
to transport on a raft.
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to form (logs or the like) into a raft.
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to travel or cross by raft.
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(of an ice floe) to transport (embedded organic or rock debris) from the shore out to sea.
verb (used without object)
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rafts,
present (3rd person singular)
-
rafted,
past participle, past
-
rafting
present participle
-
to use a raft; go or travel on a raft.
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(of an ice floe) to overlap another ice floe.
noun
noun
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a buoyant platform of logs, planks, etc, used as a vessel or moored platform
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a thick slab of reinforced concrete laid over soft ground to provide a foundation for a building
verb
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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raftsimple
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raftssimple
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have raftedperfect
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has raftedperfect
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am raftingprogressive
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are raftingprogressive
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is raftingprogressive
-
have been raftingperfect progressive
-
has been raftingperfect progressive
Past
-
raftedsimple
-
had raftedperfect
-
was raftingprogressive
-
were raftingprogressive
-
had been raftingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of raft1
First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English raft(e), “(wooden) beam, spear,” from Old Norse raptr rafter 1
Origin of raft2
An Americanism dating back to 1825–35; variant of raff
Explanation
A raft is a vessel or structure that's made to float on water. You might have an inflatable raft you use for floating around your backyard pool. Rafts come in many forms, from soft and squishy to wooden and permanent, like the rafts built on lakes for swimmers to rest on and dive off. Other rafts are mobile — they're small, flat boats meant for transporting people or goods across a river, for example. If you raft, you travel by raft. Experts guess that raft comes from the Old Norse word raptr, "log."
Vocabulary lists containing raft
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:
Written prescription fees from vets will be capped at £21 as part of a raft of changes that practices will be legally required to bring in over the coming months.
From BBC ● Sep. 21, 2026
Much of the plan is oriented around cementing the territory’s economic ties with mainland China, through a raft of commercial and educational programs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 17, 2026
Paddles for the life raft so the Clippers can change directions and make better decisions — hopefully with better decision-makers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 14, 2026
Marsh harriers, bearded tits, flocks of waders and overwintering ducks and geese are a regular sight for visitors, along with otters, water voles, fen raft spiders, orchids and rare sharp-leaved pondweed.
From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2026
His undead joints melted, dropping him to the raft.
From "The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest" by Aubrey Hartman
Citizen Zoo has also set up camera traps and "latrine rafts" - floating rafts where the water voles defecate - to help gather evidence of the population on the Hogsmill.
From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026
AFP images showed residents using rafts and inflated boats to reach higher ground with the help of the state's disaster response officials.
From Barron's ● Aug. 5, 2026
“He’s landing rockets on robot drone rafts in the ocean, and you’re saying he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Ellison rebuffed critics at the time.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 13, 2026
The process resembles natural strategies seen in diving bell spiders, which carry air bubbles underwater, and in fire ants, which form floating rafts using their water-resistant bodies.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 30, 2026
A whitecap tossed us beyond a cluster of rafts, most of them empty.
From "Salt to the Sea" by Ruta Sepetys
However, our drilling efforts recovered the first cores of this material after it has spent tens of millions of years being rafted across the seafloor as Earth's tectonic plates spread apart.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 11, 2025
Chris Brown, co-owner of the rafting business Whitewater Voyages, looked out over a boulder-strewn part of the stream where he had rafted a month earlier.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 6, 2025
In Wyoming, the Thomases fished, rafted on the Snake River and sat by a campfire overlooking the Teton Range with the other couples.
From Salon ● Aug. 10, 2023
Miguel Angel Salazar-Estrada, who rafted over the Rio Grande, told Border Patrol agents his family paid $17,000 for him to be smuggled from Guatemala.
From Washington Times ● Jul. 30, 2023
“NOTES: “Today I rafted out into the deep pools of the creek to fish.
From "My Side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George
Later, Whittaker and his family went on skiing and rafting trips with Robert and Ethel Kennedy and their children.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 15, 2026
Marczak said he had begun the film almost by accident, when he and his wife were rafting down the river thinking about a fiction project when they ran into trouble.
From Barron's ● Jan. 24, 2026
For several years, he worked as an outdoor guide, primarily leading whitewater rafting trips at the Nantahala Outdoor Center in North Carolina.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 30, 2025
Instead of all-you-can-drink wristbands, they offer adrenaline-stoking activities like fly fishing, canyoneering, snorkeling and rafting in between multicourse meals and happy hours.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 10, 2025
When I was finally allowed to read it, I very well knew this was no simple tale of rafting down a river but the everlasting story of America itself, with all our glory and shame.
From "October Sky" by Homer Hickam
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.
