Raft

How to spell raft

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce raft

What does raft mean?

1. nounA flat structure of timber, planks, or inflated material used to float on water.
2. nounAn informal term for a large number or amount of something.

Raft in a sentence

• The children paddled out to the wooden raft in the middle of the lake.

• The new manager introduced a raft of changes in her first week.

• The survivors built a raft from driftwood and rope.

• The report raised a whole raft of questions about the budget.

Where does raft come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This word comes from the Old Norse raptr, meaning a log or a beam, the very same source that gave English the roofing word 'rafter'. The Norse settlers who reshaped much of northern English vocabulary brought it in during the medieval period, and the original sense was simply a stout piece of timber. Because logs lashed together made the easiest sort of floating platform, the meaning drifted from the single beam to the bound bundle of beams that carried people and goods across water. By the late Middle Ages 'raft' had settled into its modern sense of a flat, buoyant structure. The informal sense of 'a raft of something', meaning a large collection, grew from the picture of items heaped together like logs floating in a tangle, and it is helped along by an unrelated old word 'raff' meaning a jumble.

How the word is built

• raft (single root from Old Norse raptr: log, beam); no prefix or suffix