Definition of "float" []

• To remain suspended within or on the surface of a fluid without sinking. (verb-intransitive)
• To be suspended in or move through space as if supported by a liquid. (verb-intransitive)
• To move from place to place, especially at random. (verb-intransitive)
• To move easily or lightly: "Miss Golightly . . . floated round in their arms light as a scarf” ( Truman Capote). (verb-intransitive)
• Economics To find a level in relationship to other currencies solely in response to the law of supply and demand: allowed the dollar to float. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "They will never be able to guide balloons as sailors do ships, by a rudder, because ships do not float suspended in the water as balloons float in the air; nor do birds _float_ through the air in any sense."
• "These prodigious blocks of granite, thirty or forty feet long and twenty feet thick, which float on this grim sea of ice, _do float_, and are _drifting_, drifting down to the valley below, where, in a few days, they must arrive."
• "The term float stands for floating-point (which just means that the decimal point can "float" to any position in the number)."