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raft

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English has two nouns spelled raft: the floating platform, originally a beam or rafter, and the mainly American raft, a large number, an alteration of dialect raff.[1][2][3][4]

Pronunciation

  • UK: /ɹɑːft/[5]
  • US: /ɹæft/[5]

raft1 floating platform

Etymology

The floating platform is inherited from Middle English rafte (“rafter, beam”),[6][1][7][8] borrowed from Old Norse raptr (“rafter, log”),[6][1][9][10][11][12] with the Old Norse “-pt-” pronounced “-ft-”.[3][2] The OED takes it from an early Scandinavian source; it notes that the Old Norse word also meant roof or ceiling in the plural, and compares Norwegian raft (“beam, rafter, stake, pole”), dialectal Swedish raft (“beam, rafter”) and Danish raft (“slender pole”).[4] Orel reconstructs Proto-Germanic *raftraz, with the cognates Old English ræfter (the source of rafter) and Middle Low German rafter (“small beam”),[13][3] and Hoad relates it to Old High German rāvo (“beam”) and ráfr (“roof”).[10][9] The OED sees in it, probably, the Indo-European base of Latin rēpō (“to creep”),[4] and Partridge allows that the Middle English word may instead be a shortening of the Old English ræfter.[14] Johnson (1755) guessed at Latin ratis (“raft”).[15]

Earliest recorded meaning

A beam, a spar or rafter: c. 1330, in Reinbrun in the Auchinleck manuscript;[4] Barnhart and Etymonline date this sense to about 1300.[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Ayto notes that the sense of a craft made by tying logs together apparently arose only in English,[16] and the OED likewise finds the later senses unparalleled in the other Germanic languages.[4] The step came through logs or planks fastened together to be floated to their destination, recorded from 1497 in naval accounts;[4][2][3] a flat floating structure used as a boat or platform followed (1581 in the OED's dating, first quoted from Hakluyt in 1589).[4] Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms (1859) described the huge North American timber rafts, on which the raftsmen built huts and lived for weeks while floating down to tidewater.[3] In America raft also meant a dense flock of floating ducks (1709) and a floating mass of fallen trees, vegetation or ice (1772 in the OED, by 1718 in Etymonline);[4][3] later senses include the concrete foundation slab of a building (1891), an inflatable life raft (1849), and in cookery the mass that clarifies a consommé (1962).[4] The sense "beam, rafter" lived on in Scots and northern dialect: in Cumberland a house's rafts were its rafters.[4][17] The verb, to carry on or by a raft, is recorded from 1664 in the OED and 1667 in Merriam-Webster;[4][1] Etymonline dates it to the 1680s.[3]

Timeline

  • c. 1330 – a beam, spar or rafter (later Scots and dialect).[4][2]
  • 1497 – logs or planks fastened together for floating.[4][2]
  • 1581 – a flat floating structure used as a boat or platform.[4]
  • 1664 – verb, to float casks from shore to a ship; 1667, to carry on a raft.[4][1]
  • 1709 – a flock of floating ducks (originally American).[4]
  • 1741 – verb, to travel by raft.[4]
  • 1772 – a floating mass of vegetation, ice and the like.[4]
  • 1849 – a small emergency boat, a life raft.[4]
  • 1891 – a concrete foundation slab.[4]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A flat floating structure of logs, planks or barrels fastened together, used as a boat or a moored platform.[18][1][4]
  2. A small, usually inflatable boat, such as a life raft.[4][1]
  3. A mass of logs or timber fastened together to be floated downstream.[1][4]
  4. A floating mass of vegetation or ice, or a dense flock of waterfowl on the water.[4][1]
  5. A thick slab of reinforced concrete laid as the foundation of a building on soft ground.[18][4]
  6. (archaic) A rafter or beam.[1][9][4]

Verb

  1. To carry people or goods on a raft, or logs in the form of a raft: They rafted the supplies across the lake.[1][4][18]
  2. To travel by raft, or to cross a river on one.[4][18]
  3. To tie boats or logs together into a raft.[4][9]

Word family

  • raftsman
  • life raft
  • rafting

raft2 large number

Etymology

The large number is originally American,[6][19] and comes from English raff (“a large number, abundance”), a dialect word, altered perhaps under the influence of raft in its sense of a floating mass.[4][1][6][9][20][21] Raff itself goes back to Middle English raf, the second half of the phrase “rif and raf”, everything, one and all,[6][2] which is also the source of riffraff;[6][2][3] the OED gives raff an uncertain origin, partly short for “riff and raff” and partly for riffraff.[4] Ayto suggests it may be Scandinavian, comparing Swedish rafs (“rubbish”).[16] Barnhart records raff as a large amount before 1677 and a large crowd from 1673.[2] Etymonline notes that the use arose early in the United States, where raft had meant a large floating mass of logs or fallen trees by 1718.[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A large amount, a lot: 1821, in John Howison's Sketches of Upper Canada;[4][1] Green's earliest record is from a New York paper of 1831,[19] and Barnhart dates the word to 1833.[2]

Semantic evolution

The word was listed in Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms (1848).[19] In Scots and northern English dialect, and in American speech, it meant a large number, a crowd or a load, as in a Galloway quotation in which the Cross Keys held a raft of drovers.[17] It is now frequent in the phrase a whole raft of,[4] and Cresswell notes politicians' talk of a party's whole raft of policies.[21]

Timeline

  • 1673 – raff, a large crowd; before 1677, a large amount.[2]
  • 1821 – raft, a large amount, a lot.[4][1]
  • 1831 – first American quotation, the whole raft of them.[19]
  • 1848 – recorded in Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms.[19]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (informal) A large number or amount; a lot: The new manager brought a whole raft of changes.[18][1][4]
  • rafter
  • raff
  • riffraff
  • raffish

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  6. ^ a b c d e f The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  7. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  9. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  11. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  13. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  14. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
  15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  16. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  17. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  18. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  19. ^ a b c d e Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  20. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  21. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press