Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A boat carried on a ship for use if the ship has to be abandoned.
  • noun A boat used for rescue service.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A boat constructed for the special purpose of saving life at sea in stormy weather, especially in case of shipwreck.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A strong, buoyant boat especially designed for saving the lives of shipwrecked people.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a boat especially designed for saving the lives of shipwrecked people.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a strong sea boat designed to rescue people from a sinking ship

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From life + boat.

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