Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An apparatus of various forms, as a buoyant jacket or belt, or a complete dress, designed for the preservation of the lives of persons who, from shipwreck or other cause, are compelled to trust themselves to the water.
- noun A weapon, as a pistol, or specifically a short stick with a loaded head, used for defense against assailants.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun An apparatus, made in very various forms, and of various materials, for saving one from drowning by buoying up the body while in the water.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun rescue equipment consisting of a buoyant belt or jacket to keep a person from drowning
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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I gasped with the anguish and shock of it, filling my lungs before the life-preserver popped me to the surface.
Chapter 1 2010
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Americans are drowning, and republicans quibble about what color life-preserver we should toss them.
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My next memory involves being at the bottom of a Costa Rican river wondering which direction was up and holding my breath while I waited for my life-preserver to sort things out—which it did.
A Year Without Fear Scott Adams 2011
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I met that aged sailorman glad-eyed and beaming, with all the simulated relief at deliverance that a drowning man would display on finding a life-preserver in his last despairing clutch.
Confession 2010
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But when I gave him every particular that had occurred, he tried to bluster and took down a life-preserver from the wall.
Sole Music 2010
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After that we tried going out on the lake in the paddleboats they have at the zoo, but it was just too hot, particularly with the life-preserver around our necks.
Day in the Life of an Idiot lyda222 2007
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It grabbed onto his as if it was a life-preserver.
Jason Stoddard, Strange and Happy » Blog Archive » Eternal Franchise, 18.1 of 31.1 2009
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Their list of humor enhancements comes off as a good life-preserver for a bi-polar manic-depressive sociopath to use as they cling to some shred of a reason for living.
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Rose Kohler wrote about the importance of Jewish education in Religious School Work and stated there are those who feel “religious faith is like a life-preserver in time of trouble, and in times of health and peace is laid quietly on the shelf.”
Rose Kohler. 2009
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Mark Thoma writes, if someone without a life-preserver who is struggling in the water grabs someone who is wearing one, and in the process takes them both down, that doesn't mean that the life-preserver failed to do its job.
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