flyboat

English

Alternative forms

• fly-boat

Etymology

Borrowed from Dutch vlieboot, but re-analysed as fly +‎ boat.

Noun

flyboat (plural flyboats)

1. A large flat-bottomed Dutch coasting vessel.
   • August 14, 1595, Thomas Treffry, letter to Sir Robert Cecil

     a ship of Bristol was chased into this harbour by two Spanish fly-boats, and they report […] that there are five men of war, Spanish, in the road of Conquet

2. A kind of passenger boat formerly used on canals.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “flyboat”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)