BUOY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does buoy mean? 

• BUOY (noun)
  The noun BUOY has 1 sense:

1. bright-colored; a float attached by rope to the seabed to mark channels in a harbor or underwater hazards

  Familiarity information: BUOY used as a noun is very rare.

• BUOY (verb)
  The verb BUOY has 3 senses:

1. float on the surface of water

2. keep afloat

3. mark with a buoy

  Familiarity information: BUOY used as a verb is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BUOY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Bright-colored; a float attached by rope to the seabed to mark channels in a harbor or underwater hazards

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("buoy" is a kind of...):

point of reference; reference; reference point (an indicator that orients you generally)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "buoy"):

acoustic buoy (a buoy that can be heard (at night))

can; can buoy (a buoy with a round bottom and conical top)

conical buoy; nun; nun buoy (a buoy resembling a cone)

spar buoy (a buoy resembling a vertical log)

Derivation:

buoy (mark with a buoy)

buoy (float on the surface of water)

• BUOY (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they buoy    ... he / she / it buoys   
Past simple: buoyed   
Past participle: buoyed   
-ing form: buoying   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Float on the surface of water

Classified under:

Verbs of walking, flying, swimming

Hypernyms (to "buoy" is one way to...):

float; swim (be afloat either on or below a liquid surface and not sink to the bottom)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Somebody ----s

Derivation:

buoy (bright-colored; a float attached by rope to the seabed to mark channels in a harbor or underwater hazards)

buoyant (tending to float on a liquid or rise in air or gas)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Keep afloat

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Synonyms:

buoy; buoy up

Context example:

The life vest buoyed him up

Hypernyms (to "buoy" is one way to...):

hold; hold up; support; sustain (be the physical support of; carry the weight of)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s somebody
Something ----s something

Derivation:

buoyant (tending to float on a liquid or rise in air or gas)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Mark with a buoy

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "buoy" is one way to...):

mark (designate as if by a mark)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

buoy (bright-colored; a float attached by rope to the seabed to mark channels in a harbor or underwater hazards)

 Context examples 

“How fast is she ebbin’? What’s the drift, eh? Listen to that, will you? A bell-buoy, and we’re a-top of it! See ’em alterin’ the course!”

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Then you have some secret hope to buoy you up and please you with whispers of the future?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The seafloor system is an anchored spar buoy topped by a high precision Global Positioning System.

(Geoscientists develop technology to improve forecasting of earthquakes, tsunamis, National Science Foundation)

And you can hear the chains a-jangle as you go about and reach for the other buoy.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The sun's shock waves push these particles around like buoys in a tsunami.

(Sun sends more 'tsunami waves' to Voyager 1, NASA)

At the end of it is a buoy with a bell, which swings in bad weather, and sends in a mournful sound on the wind.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Other items spotted in the stew of plastic include bottles, plates, buoys, ropes and even a toilet seat.

(Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch Growing Rapidly, Study Finds, VOA)

It combines data from NASA's Bromide, Ozone, and Mercury Experiment (BROMEX) field campaign, NASA's Operation IceBridge flights, and instrumented buoys and ice floes staffed by Soviet scientists from the 1950s through the 1990s.

(Snow cover on Arctic Sea ice has thinned 30 to 50 percent, NASA)

One said she lived in the South Foreland Light, and had singed her whiskers by doing so; another, that she was made fast to the great buoy outside the harbour, and could only be visited at half-tide; a third, that she was locked up in Maidstone jail for child-stealing; a fourth, that she was seen to mount a broom in the last high wind, and make direct for Calais.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The buoy, created with the assistance of a grant from NSF's Ocean Technology and Interdisciplinary Coordination program, was installed off Egmont Key in the Gulf of Mexico and has been producing data on the three-dimensional motion of the sea floor.

(Geoscientists develop technology to improve forecasting of earthquakes, tsunamis, National Science Foundation)