Flotation

How to spell flotation

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce flotation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does flotation mean?

1. nounThe act or capacity of staying on the surface of a liquid rather than sinking.
2. nounThe process of launching a company on a stock market by offering its shares to the public.

Flotation in a sentence

• Every passenger seat doubles as a flotation device in an emergency.

• The startup raised millions through its stock market flotation.

• The life jacket provides enough flotation to support an adult.

• Investors waited eagerly for the company flotation in the spring.

Where does flotation come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is essentially the English verb 'float' fitted with the Latin-derived suffix '-ation', which builds a noun describing an action or a state. The verb 'float' itself is a native Germanic word, coming from Old English 'flotian', meaning to rest on or drift upon the surface of water, and it is a relative of the Old Norse 'flota' and of words across the Germanic family. When the abstract noun was coined in the early nineteenth century, the spelling settled as 'flotation' rather than the more obvious 'floatation', because writers leaned on the look of French forms such as 'flotter' and 'flottaison'. That dropped letter is the whole trap: although the base word is clearly 'float', the noun loses its 'a', so the eye expects a letter that is not there. The financial sense, launching a company by selling its shares to the public, grew out of the same image of setting something afloat.

How the word is built

• flot- (from float, to rest on the surface of a liquid)
• -ation (noun of action/state)