Flotillas

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small fleet of boats or ships operating together, often for a specific purpose
2. a group of vessels navigating in the same area for coordinated activities
3. a collection of smaller watercraft organized to conduct joint missions or tasks

Etymology: "Flotillas" is simply the plural of "flotilla", so it is the form of a word that came into English from Spanish. The base word is a diminutive of the Spanish "flota", meaning "fleet", which means a "little fleet" is built directly into its shape: the "-illa" ending shrinks the sense of the original noun, much as "-ito" does in other Spanish words. The Spanish "flota" was itself borrowed from French "flotte", a word for a group of ships, which in turn traces back to the same root that gives English "float". So the word for a small fleet is, at bottom, a term about things that float on water, passed from French to Spanish and then into English as a diminutive.

Synonyms: fleets, armadas