fleet: [OE] Fleet is one of a vast tangled web of words which traces its history back ultimately to Indo-European *pleu-, denoting ‘flow, float’ (amongst its other English descendants are fly, flood, flow, fledge, fowl, plover, and pluvial). Fleet itself comes from the extended Indo- European base *pleud-, via the Germanic verb *fleutan and Old English flēotan ‘float, swim’ (modern English float comes from the related Old English flotian).
The verb has now virtually died out, but it survives in the form of the present participial adjective fleeting, which developed the sense ‘transient’ in the 16th century, and in the derived noun fleet: Old English seems to have had two distinct nouns flēot based on the verb flēotan, one of which meant ‘ships’, and the other of which signified ‘creek, inlet’ (it survives in the name of London’s Fleet Street, which runs down to the now covered-up Thames tributary, the river Fleet).
The adjective fleet ‘quick’ (as in ‘fleet of foot’) was probably borrowed from Old Norse fljótr, likewise a descendant of Germanic *fleut-. => fledge, float, flood, flow, fowl, plover, pluvial
fleet (n.)
Old English fleot "a ship, raft, floating vessel," also, collectively, "means of sea travel; boats generally," from fleotan "to float" (see fleet (v.)). Sense of "naval force, group of ships under one command" is in late Old English. The more usual Old English word was flota "a ship," also "a fleet; a sailor." The fleet for "the navy" is from 1712.
The Old English word also meant "estuary, inlet, flow of water," especially the one into the Thames near Ludgate Hill, which lent its name to Fleet Street (home of newspaper and magazine houses, standing for "the English press" since 1882), Fleet prison (long used for debtors), etc.
fleet (adj.)
"swift," 1520s, but probably older than the record; apparently from or cognate with Old Norse fliotr "swift," from Proto-Germanic *fleuta, which is related to the source of fleet (v.). Related: Fleetness.
fleet (v.)
Old English fleotan "to float; drift; flow, run (as water); swim; sail (of a ship)," from Proto-Germanic *fleutan (cognates: Old Frisian fliata, Old Saxon fliotan "to flow," Old High German fliozzan "to float, flow," German fliessen "to flow, run, trickle" (as water), Old Norse fliota "to float, flow"), from PIE root *pleu- "to flow, swim" (see pluvial).
Meaning "to glide away like a stream, vanish imperceptibly" is from c. 1200; hence "to fade, to vanish" (1570s). Related: Fleeted; fleeting.
雙語例句
1. A fleet of ambulances took the injured to hospital.
一隊救護車把傷者送往醫院。
來自柯林斯例句
2. He ordered the combined fleet to convoy troops to Naples.
他命令聯合艦隊將軍隊護送到那不勒斯。
來自柯林斯例句
3. Using an alias, he had rented a house in Fleet, Hampshire.
他用化名在漢普郡的艦隊街租了間房子。
來自柯林斯例句
4. In contrast with its surface fleet, Britain's submarine force was relatively small.
同其水麵艦隊相比，英國的潛艇部隊規模相對較小。
來自柯林斯例句
5. A fleet of police cars suddenly arrived. Dozens of officers piled out.