refloat
Americanverb (used with object)
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to put (a boat or a beached whale) back into the water.
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to reintroduce or re-establish (an idea, project, business, etc.), often on a new or better footing.
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to issue again.
Other Word Forms
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:
On the way back south, it spent four days unloading cargo from the Thamesborg, the vessel grounded in the Franklin Strait, to help refloat it before the onset of new ice.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 30, 2025
Efforts to refloat it have been unsuccessful so far.
From BBC ● May 23, 2025
Last week, cleanup crews were able to refloat the Dali and guide it back to port.
From Seattle Times ● May 29, 2024
By 3:30 p.m. local time, rescue teams decided to euthanize the surviving animals “on welfare grounds,” after it was determined that rough waves and shallow beach conditions made it unsafe to refloat them.
From New York Times ● Jul. 17, 2023
I shall buy the Dolphin steam tug—I can get her on easy terms of payment—fill her with coal and stores, and go to Kent's Group in Bass's Straits, and try and refloat the Braybrook Castle.
From A Memory Of The Southern Seas 1904 by Louis Becke
Two dams have been built to isolate the damaged section and many of the stranded boats have already been refloated.
From BBC ● Jan. 4, 2026
It was only barely refloated by rescue vessels before new ice formed, which would have trapped it over winter.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 30, 2025
The ship is expected to be refloated and guided back to the Port of Baltimore early next week, officials said Wednesday.
From Seattle Times ● May 15, 2024
Treasury Department sanctions being refloated in Indonesia is filled with Venezuelan fuel, according to vessel monitoring services.
From Reuters ● Nov. 10, 2022
Blue Team’s sixteen lost ships, which were lying at the bottom of the Persian Gulf, were refloated.
From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell
News organisations followed every development, from its successful refloating to its relaunch last Friday.
From BBC ● Jun. 16, 2025
Crews will have to remove all that before refloating the stationary ship and guiding it back into the Port of Baltimore.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 19, 2024
Daren Grover, general manager at charity Project Jonah, which deals with stranded whales, said there were also not enough people in the area to help with refloating.
From Reuters ● Oct. 11, 2022
But with a backlog that had grown to over 300 vessels waiting to transit the canal, the refloating was not the end of the affair.
From New York Times ● Jul. 7, 2021
Along the banks logs grounded, and were rolled over by their own momentum into places so shallow as to discourage any hope of refloating them unless by main strength.
From The Riverman by Stewart Edward White
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.
