[f. FLOATING ppl. a.]
1. An island that floats.
1638. Sir T. Herbert, Trav. (ed. 2), 13. Whales, the Seas Leviathan, who after their manner thundred our welcome into Æthiopia, fuzzing or spouting part of the briny Ocean in wantonnesse out of their oylie pipes bored by nature a top their prodigious shoulders, like so many floating Ilands concomitating us.
1850. Lyell, 2nd Visit U. S., II. xxxi. 186. There is a floating island in it, well wooded, on which a friend of mine once landed from a canoe, when, to his surprise, it began to sink with his weight.
2. Cookery. (U.S.) A custard with floating masses of whipped cream or white of eggs.
1771. Franklin, Letter to Mrs. Deborah Franklin, 14 Aug., Wks. 1887, IV. 415. At dinner, among other nice things, we had a floating island, which they always particularly have on birthdays of any of their own six children.
1860. O. W. Holmes, Elsie V., vii. (1891), 110. The marvellous floating-island,—name suggestive of all that is romantic in the imagination of youthful palates.
