Meaning & use
buoy
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Meanings
nouncountable
A floating object tied to the sea or river bottom to mark a channel, danger, or mooring place for boats.
Grammar: Plural is buoys. Often followed by a describing noun: a marker buoy.
Patterns
- a buoy marking something
The red buoy showed sailors where the safe channel began.
Our boat was tied to a mooring buoy in the bay.
A small buoy bobbed above the lobster pot.
verbtransitive
To lift someone's mood or confidence and help them keep going when things are hard.
Grammar: Often used in the passive with by or with up: she was buoyed by the support.
Patterns
- buoy someone up
- be buoyed by something
The crowd's cheering buoyed the exhausted runners in the last mile.
She was buoyed by her teacher's kind comments.
Good news from the clinic buoyed the family's spirits.
verbtransitivebusiness
To hold something up or keep it from falling, especially prices, demand, or an economy.
Grammar: Used in business writing; the subject is the thing providing support: strong sales buoyed profits.
Patterns
- buoy something up
Tourism buoyed the local economy during the summer.
Government spending helped buoy prices during the downturn.
Strong exports buoyed the company's earnings for the year.
Word forms
| plural | buoys |
|---|---|
| third person singular | buoys |
| past tense | buoyed |
| past participle | buoyed |
| -ing form | buoying |
Common combinations
- mooring buoy
- They tied the dinghy to a mooring buoy overnight.
- marker buoy
- A marker buoy warned swimmers of the rocks.
- buoy up
- A few kind words helped buoy him up after the defeat.
- buoyed by
- Buoyed by early success, the startup hired more staff.
- buoy hopes
- Positive test results buoyed the researchers' hopes.
- life buoy
- A life buoy hung beside the ladder on the dock.
Synonyms and how they differ
- marker
- Marker is general and can be on land or sea, while a buoy is specifically a floating marker on water.
- boost
- Boost as a verb means to raise something quickly, whereas buoy suggests keeping it up through a difficult time.
- cheer
- Cheer is to make someone happier briefly, while buoy suggests lasting support that keeps a person going.
- sustain
- Sustain is more formal and means to keep something going, while buoy adds the sense of lifting it above trouble.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: buoy or boy?
buoy vs boy
In British English, buoy is pronounced exactly like boy, but they are different words: a buoy floats in water, and a boy is a young male.
Practice
The team was ___ by the fans' loud encouragement and played their best half of the season.
Choose one answer.
Buoyed by means lifted in spirit by something. Buried, boarded and bounded do not fit with the fans' encouragement.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “buoy”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.