fley-bátr

n. poet. a kind of swift ship.

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n. a kind of swift ship (= snekkja, q. v.); only found in poets, as Thiodolf calls the sea fleyja flatvöllr, the flat-field of the fleys, cp. Hkv. 2. 4; fley ok fagrar árar, a fley and beautiful oars, Egill; used by poets also in many compds, as fley-braut, fley-vangr, the road-field of the fleys, etc.; never in prose, except in pr. names, as Gesta-fley, Fms. viii, Sverr. S.; but fley-skip occurs not only in verse, Fb. i. 528, but also in a deed of the year 1315, N. G. L. iii. 112:—also used of merchant ships, Ann. The Span. flibóte, Engl. fly-boat (Johnson) point to a form fley-bátr = fley-skip, though that form has not been found; from the Span. flibóte prob. came the Ital. flibustiero, Anglo-American filibuster: perh. also the Germ. freibeuter, Engl. freebooter, Dutch vrijbuiter represent the same word, altered so as to give an intelligible sense in the respective languages.