tugboat

UK/ˈtʌɡbəʊt/US/ˈtʌɡboʊt/

nounB2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,970 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: tugboats

A tugboat is a small powerful boat that pushes big ships around. A harbour tugboat, the tugboat took the line, three tugboats.

It is nearly all engine, with a hull built round the machinery, and the power to weight ratio is extraordinary. A large ship cannot steer at low speed, so tugboats do the manoeuvring in harbour, usually two or three at once.

Definitions of tugboat

1nountugboatA small powerful boat that pushes big ships around.B2
“The little red tugboat pulled the broken-down ferry back to the harbour.”

tugboat is a boat.

Where it comes from

Tug plus boat, from the nineteenth century, when steam made such a boat possible.

From tug + boat. Sense 2 from monthly tugboat, a reference to the saying "our ship has come in," here referring to a small, "reliable" "tugboat" instead of a large windfall.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Vehicles & Machines

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tugboat in the wild

The tugboat used in the film, renamed Arthur Foss in 1934, is the oldest wooden tugboat afloat in the world and remains preserved by Northwest Seaport in Seattle.
Tugboat Annie
When USS New Jersey was launched in December 1942, Jupiter was one of the tugboats that helped move the massive battleship.
Jupiter (tugboat)
Dornbos, is a historic canal tugboat based at Waterford in Saratoga County, New York.
Urger (canal tugboat)
The Natick class is a class of harbor tugboats that have been active since the 1960s.
Natick-class tugboat
The Valiant class is a class of US Navy yard tugboats (YT) that entered service in 2009.
Valiant-class harbor tug

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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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