the.com/raft
A wooden refusal to admit the river is in charge.
means A flat floating platform of logs, planks, or inflated material used to travel on or across water; also, informally, a large quantity of something.
from From Middle English 'raft' or 'rafte,' borrowed from Old Norse 'raptr' meaning a log, rafter, or beam — the same timber instinct that gave us the 'rafter' in a roof. The Norse were sailors and woodworkers, and the word carried their sense of stout structural wood from house-beam to water-borne platform. The colloquial 'a raft of things' (a whole pile) is a separate, later twist, possibly muddled with an unrelated dialect word for a heap.
- Etymology
- From Old Norse raptr, meaning a rafter or log
- Survival craft
- Inflatable rafts kept WWII sailors alive at sea
- Collective noun
- A group of floating ducks is also called a raft
- Kon-Tiki
- Balsa raft crossed 4,300 miles of Pacific in 1947
- Whitewater grading
- Rapids rated I to VI, six meaning near-unrunnable
wooden raft kon-tiki — thor heyerdahl's 1947 expedition across pacific ocean from peru to polynesia
balsa raft ra expeditions — thor heyerdahl's 1969-1970 papyrus reed boat attempts to cross atlantic from egypt
huck finn mississippi raft — mark twain's 1884 novel features iconic raft journey down mississippi river