lifeboat

UK/ˈlaɪfˌbəʊt/US/ˈlaɪfˌboʊt/

nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,173 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: lifeboats

A lifeboat is the boat that goes out to rescue people at sea. Launch the lifeboat, the lifeboat crew, call out the lifeboat.

In Britain the service is run by a charity and crewed by volunteers, which surprises people from countries where it is a state coastguard job. Modern ones self-right if capsized. A lifeboat on a ship is a different thing — for leaving, not for rescuing.

Definitions of lifeboat

1nounlifeboatA boat used to rescue people at sea.B1+
“The lifeboat raced out through the storm to reach the sinking fishing boat.”

lifeboat is a boat.

Where it comes from

Life plus boat, recorded from the late eighteenth century, when purpose-built rescue boats were first designed.

From life + boat. From life + boat.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sea & Sailing

Practise this word

lifeboat in the wild

The film is set entirely on a lifeboat launched from a freighter torpedoed and sunk by a Nazi U-boat.
Lifeboat (1944 film)
A second and different meaning for "tender" is small boats carried by larger vessels, to be used either as lifeboats, or as transport to shore, or both.
Ship's tender
Most of its lifeboat crews are unpaid volunteers.
Royal National Lifeboat Institution
The lifeboat davit has falls (now made of wire, historically of manila rope) that are used to lower the lifeboat into the water.
Davit
The Atlantic 75 gradually replaced the Atlantic 21, with the majority of the ninety-six Atlantic 21 lifeboats retired from service by 2006.
Atlantic 21-class lifeboat

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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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