flotilla

English

Etymology

From Spanish flotilla, diminutive of flota (“fleet”), from French flotte.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /floʊˈtɪlə/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: flo‧til‧la
• Rhymes: -ɪlə

Noun

flotilla (plural flotillas)

1. (nautical) A small fleet of warships (usually of the same class), or a fleet of small ships.
   • 1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth, hardback edition, page 102:

     Toward the horizon a flotilla of fishing-boats showed immutable, pink-lacquered by the evening sun.

   • 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Quarians Codex entry:

     Driven from their home system by the geth nearly three centuries ago, most quarians now live aboard the Migrant Fleet, a flotilla of fifty thousand vessels ranging in size from passenger shuttles to mobile space stations.
     Home to 17 million quarians, the flotilla understandably has scarce resources. Because of this, each quarian must go on a rite of passage known as the Pilgrimage when they come of age. They leave the fleet and only return once they have found something of value they can bring back to their people.

2. (by extension) A small group of things or people
   • 2009 October 29, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], “Abandon Starbucks!”, in Mr Stink, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN, page 74:

     After a few moments Chloe saw Rosamund walking towards them with a small flotilla of shopping bags.

   • 2021, Liz Trenow, The Secrets of the Lake:

     flotilla of tiny ducklings

3. (cellular automata) A spaceship made of one or more central mutually stabilizing overweight spaceships flanked by lightweight, middleweight, or heavyweight spaceships that prevent the formation of destructive eggs.
   • 2005 September 28, Andrew Adamatzky, Genaro Juárez Martínez, Juan Carlos Seck Tuoh Mora, Phenomenology of reaction-diffusion binary-state cellular automata‎^[1], page 21:

     For rule R(2222) a flotilla of six gliders traveling eastwards is generated.

   • 2016 July 9, MathematRec‎^[2], Big and natural and (5,2)c/190:

     Now, the smallest known Life spaceship that isn’t a glider, a *WSS, or a flotilla of *WSSs is the loafer, which has population 20 in a 9 by 9 bounding box.

   • 2025 October 14 (last accessed), Conway’s Game of Life‎^[3]:

     The resulting spaceship (shown below) has a phase with only 24 cells, making it in this respect the smallest known spaceship other than the standard spaceships and some trivial two-spaceship flotillas derived from them.

Derived terms

• flotillin
• squadrilla

Translations

small fleet

• Belarusian: флаты́лія f (flatýlija)
• Catalan: flotilla (ca) f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 小船隊 / 小船队 (xiǎochuánduì), 區艦隊 / 区舰队

• Czech: flotila (cs) f
• Danish: flotille c
• Dutch: flottielje (nl)
• Finnish: lippue (fi)
• French: flottille (fr) f
• Galician: flotilla f
• German: Flottille (de) f
• Hungarian: hajóraj (hu), flottilla (hu)
• Icelandic: lítill floti m, smáfloti m, flotasveit f
• Italian: flottiglia (it) f
• Korean: 전단 (ko) (jeondan)
• Latin: classicula f
• Latvian: flotila f
• Lithuanian: flotilė f
• Macedonian: флоти́ла f (flotíla)
• Māori: kahupapa
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: flotilje m

  Nynorsk: flotilje m

• Pannonian Rusyn: флотила f (flotila)
• Polish: flotylla (pl) f
• Portuguese: flotilha (pt) f
• Romanian: flotilă (ro) f
• Russian: флоти́лия (ru) f (flotílija)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: флотила f

  Latin: flotila (sh) f

• Slovak: flotila (sk) f
• Spanish: flotilla (es) f
• Swedish: flottilj (sv) c
• Ukrainian: флоти́лія (uk) f (flotýlija)

See also

• convoy

Catalan

Etymology

Borrowed from Spanish flotilla.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic) [fluˈti.ʎə]
• IPA^(key): (Valencia) [floˈti.ʎa]

Noun

flotilla f (plural flotilles)

1. flotilla

Further reading

• “flotilla”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana [Dictionary of the Catalan Language] (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies [Catalan: Institut d'Estudis Catalans], April 2007
• “flotilla”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2026
• “flotilla” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• Alcover, Antoni Maria; Moll, Francesc de Borja (1963), “flotilla”, in Diccionari català-valencià-balear (in Catalan)

Spanish

Etymology

From flota +‎ -illa.

Pronunciation

 

• IPA^(key): /floˈtiʝa/ [floˈt̪i.ʝa]

• IPA^(key): /floˈtiʝa/ [floˈt̪i.ʝa] (Equatorial Guinea, most of Latin America and Spain)
• IPA^(key): /floˈtiʎa/ [floˈt̪i.ʎa] (Andes Mountains, rustic northern Spain, Paraguay, Philippines)
• IPA^(key): /floˈtiʃa/ [floˈt̪i.ʃa] (Buenos Aires and environs)
• IPA^(key): /floˈtiʒa/ [floˈt̪i.ʒa] (elsewhere in Argentina and Uruguay)

 

• Rhymes: -iʝa

• Rhymes: -iʝa (Equatorial Guinea, most of Latin America and Spain)
• Rhymes: -iʎa (Andes Mountains, rustic northern Spain, Paraguay, Philippines)
• Rhymes: -iʃa (Buenos Aires and environs)
• Rhymes: -iʒa (elsewhere in Argentina and Uruguay)

• Syllabification: flo‧ti‧lla

Noun

flotilla f (plural flotillas)

1. fleet, flotilla

Descendants

• → Catalan: flotilla
• → English: flotilla
• → French: flottille
• → Italian: flottiglia
• → Portuguese: flotilha

Further reading

• “flotilla”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025