What's the difference between fleet and flit?

Fleet


Definition:

  • (n. & a.) To sail; to float.
  • (n. & a.) To fly swiftly; to pass over quickly; to hasten; to flit as a light substance.
  • (n. & a.) To slip on the whelps or the barrel of a capstan or windlass; -- said of a cable or hawser.
  • (v. t.) To pass over rapidly; to skin the surface of; as, a ship that fleets the gulf.
  • (v. t.) To hasten over; to cause to pass away lighty, or in mirth and joy.
  • (v. t.) To draw apart the blocks of; -- said of a tackle.
  • (v. t.) To cause to slip down the barrel of a capstan or windlass, as a rope or chain.
  • (v. i.) Swift in motion; moving with velocity; light and quick in going from place to place; nimble.
  • (v. i.) Light; superficially thin; not penetrating deep, as soil.
  • (v. i.) A number of vessels in company, especially war vessels; also, the collective naval force of a country, etc.
  • (v. i.) A flood; a creek or inlet; a bay or estuary; a river; -- obsolete, except as a place name, -- as Fleet Street in London.
  • (v. i.) A former prison in London, which originally stood near a stream, the Fleet (now filled up).
  • (v. i.) To take the cream from; to skim.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He's finding solace, fleeting and fragmentary, and every springy guitar lick is its own benediction," Chinen wrote.
  • (2) Fleeting though it may have been (he jetted off to New York this morning and is due in Toronto on Saturday), there was a poignant reason for his appearance: he was here to play a tribute set to Frankie Knuckles, the Godfather of house and one of Morales's closest friends, who died suddenly in March.
  • (3) If battery and EV prices fall more rapidly over the period, and the price of oil increases more rapidly, replacing the fleet with EVs could be cost-neutral.
  • (4) As aircraft capable of sustaining high "G" maneuvers enter the U.S. Navy Fleet, the reported incidence of cervical injury to aircrew seems to have increased.
  • (5) A popular strain of foreign policy thought has long held that the US should be guided primarily by self-interest rather than human rights concerns: hence, since the US wants its Fifth Fleet to remain in Bahrain and believes ( with good reason ) that these dictators will serve US interests far better than if popular will in these countries prevails, it is right to prop up these autocrats.
  • (6) Her unclothed remains were found six months later by mushroom pickers at Yateley Heath Woods, near Fleet, Hampshire, 25 miles away.
  • (7) A warship from Russia’s Pacific fleet also accompanied former Russian president Medvedev’s visit to San Francisco in 2010.” Officials from the Russian embassy in Canberra declined to confirm the details when contacted by Guardian Australia on Wednesday.
  • (8) One of the Conservative party's most influential voices on defence has conceded that Britain can no longer be regarded as a "division-one military power", and raised questions over the sense of replacing the Trident nuclear fleet with a new generation of missile-launching submarines.
  • (9) But although under the ayatollahs there have been fleeting moments of optimism, there have also been long periods of repression.
  • (10) And it is certainly before you factor in the service's upgrade (worth around £9bn, and paid for by the public), and the fleet of Pendolino trains (again, largely subsidised by the government).
  • (11) I couldn’t even imagine it because I have done it so many times.” The incident received only fleeting national coverage, occurring less than a month before the presidential election.
  • (12) "We have rhetorical pressure, which we are using, and we have the Seventh Fleet, which nobody wants to use, and in between our options are more constrained," he said.
  • (13) When he talks about his work and his motivation, he exudes an intensity, as if his time with you is also fleeting.
  • (14) Many of Long’s pieces are fragile and fleeting: a stripe of un-mown grass in an otherwise close cropped lawn at the Henry Moore foundation , a misty circle in Scotland that lasted only until the day warmed up, a stripe of green grass left by plucking daisies, or paintings in wet mud that dry out and crumble.
  • (15) He seemed to have his finger on an invisible button, hardwired into the brains of the Fleet Street editors, driving them into an apoplectic frenzy of rage each time he chose to push it.
  • (16) But the task remains to move the country's remaining fossil fuel-dependent sectors to clean technology: Iceland's fishing fleet, cars and buses, which run on oil and petrol, ironically make the country one of the highest per head greenhouse gas emitters in Europe .
  • (17) 1,4-Dideoxy-1,4-imino-D-mannitol (DIM) was synthesized chemically from benzyl-alpha-D-mannopyranoside [Fleet et al (1984) J. Chem.
  • (18) The agency hopes it can later extend the work to urban rivers outside London, but is pessimistic that parts of the Fleet might one day be released to public view.
  • (19) The Institute of Cetacean Research, a quasi-governmental body that oversees the hunts, had hoped to use sales from the meat to cover the costs of the whaling fleet's expeditions, she said.
  • (20) "The council's fleet of company cars have upper limits on the CO2 they produce," says Thorp.

Flit


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To move with celerity through the air; to fly away with a rapid motion; to dart along; to fleet; as, a bird flits away; a cloud flits along.
  • (v. i.) To flutter; to rove on the wing.
  • (v. i.) To pass rapidly, as a light substance, from one place to another; to remove; to migrate.
  • (v. i.) To remove from one place or habitation to another.
  • (v. i.) To be unstable; to be easily or often moved.
  • (a.) Nimble; quick; swift. [Obs.] See Fleet.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) From his 19th-floor newsroom Eurípedes Alcântara enjoys a spectacular view over the "new Brazil"; helicopters flit through the afternoon sky, shiny new cars honk their way across town, tower blocks and luxury shopping centres sprout like turnips from the urban sprawl.
  • (2) I try not to flit between characters too much because I don't like that either.
  • (3) Facebook Twitter Pinterest He commands the screen even when silent, his pain flitting across that gaunt, ravaged face … Sean Bean in Broken.
  • (4) In our own time, Brooke has become the haunting symbol of a doomed generation, flitting across the pages of novels by Alan Hollinghurst and AS Byatt like a volatile and irreverent Peter Pan.
  • (5) The social group that is most affected by this kind of work is also known as the "precariat": they live and work insecurely, flitting between short-term dead-end jobs, without an occupational identity or opportunity to develop themselves.
  • (6) Cardinale made them at the same time, flitting from Fellini's modernist, black-and-white vision of Rome to Visconti's sumptuous recreation of 19th-century Sicily.
  • (7) It is hugely disappointing that President Trump is making the mistake in rowing back on the Paris agreement,” she said, “Climate change is a very real global issue that affects the successful future of our planet.” Carlos Rittl, executive secretary of the Brazilian Climate Observatory said the decision “creates the risk of a domino effect” that could put the target of keeping temperature rises below 2C (3.6F) out of reach, though he held out hope that global talks can make greater progress in reducing fossil fuels and promoting renewable energy in the absence of a country that has flitted back and forth between leadership and obstruction.
  • (8) The 1970s then saw Spark flitting edgily between a harsh, lurid satire and something close to the French nouveau roman.
  • (9) Ozil is an impudent playmaker who usually flits behind the lone striker, finding space and creating opportunities with his sublime left foot.
  • (10) At first, he refused to speak, preferring to communicate by eye contact alone You’d glimpse him around the Hotel de Paris: a shadow flitting between the marble colonnades.
  • (11) If they are poor, it wants them to be invisible, flitting uncomplainingly from one menial job to the next.
  • (12) Film-buyers flit around, desperately trying to discover which films are beeping on their rivals' radar, and to establish what is being bought and by whom.
  • (13) Balding was equally comfortable flitting between the two.
  • (14) She didn’t need all these superficial connections with people that many of us have as we flit about the world from one social occasion to another.
  • (15) Unlike the supremely adapted swallow aeronauts that skimmed the grass in the pastures and would shortly be migrating, the redstart merely flitted between perches on broad wings that seem better suited to following the erratic flight of an insect than to long-distance travel.
  • (16) As I hob-nobbed with friends, family and the invited guests of the RI at the drinks reception beforehand, my mind kept flitting back to my notes.
  • (17) And so he flits from past to present and back again, making connections with a wry and scathing wit.
  • (18) The patient presented with fever, flitting polyarthritis and an elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate.
  • (19) Flitting between at least three properties nestled on white sand beaches and manicured golf courses, he applied for temporary residency and even enrolled on the country's electoral register.
  • (20) His songs were the soundtrack to my life: a quavering New York voice with little range singing songs of alienation and despair, with flashes of impossible hope and of those tiny, perfect days and nights we want to last for ever, important because they are so finite and so few; songs filled with people, some named, some anonymous, who strut and stagger and flit and shimmy and hitch-hike into the limelight and out again.