flotilla

UK/floʊˈtɪlə/US/floʊˈtɪlə/

nounC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #15,040 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: flotillas

A flotilla is a small fleet of boats. A flotilla of small craft, the flotilla sailed, a rescue flotilla.

It is used of small vessels rather than warships, and the little ships at Dunkirk are the flotilla everybody thinks of. The Spanish is a diminutive of fleet, so a flotilla is literally a little fleet.

Definitions of flotilla

1nounflotillaA small fleet of boats.C2
“A flotilla of fishing boats sailed into the harbour to welcome the returning sailors.”

flotilla is a fleet.

Where it comes from

Spanish flotilla is a diminutive of flota, a fleet.

French
flotte
Spanish
flotilla
English, today
flotilla

Built from

flota · Spanish — fleet

From Spanish flotilla, diminutive of flota (“fleet”), from French flotte.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

flotilla in the wild

A flotilla (from Spanish, meaning a small flota (fleet) of ships), or naval flotilla, is a formation of small ships that may be part of a larger fleet.
Flotilla
Only with the design of the Adventure to Sentinel class scout cruisers in the early 1900s were specialist flotilla leaders created and built by Britain.
Flotilla leader
The last specialized flotilla leader to be built for the Royal Navy was HMS Inglefield, launched in 1936.
Flotilla leader
Another notable person from the flotilla was Otto Kretschmer, a young commander made infamous due to his high-scoring U-Boat skipper score.
1st U-boat Flotilla
The flotilla at first only consisted of U-9, a Type IIB boat commissioned on 21 August 1935.
1st U-boat Flotilla

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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