In the latter case it would be known as a "sherbet float" or an "ice-cream float." Few soda water dispensers know what is meant by a "Float Ice Cream Soda." This is not strange since the term is a coined one. Float.-An ade upon the top of which is floated a layer of grape juice, ginger ale, or in some cases a disher of fruit sherbet or ice cream. as "raft." Meaning "platform on wheels used for displays in parades, etc." is from 1888, probably from earlier sense of "flat-bottomed boat" (1550s). 1300 as an attachment for buoyancy on a fishing line or net early 14c. The early senses were the now-mostly-obsolete ones of the Old English words: "state of floating" (early 12c.), "swimming" (mid-13c.) "a fleet of ships a company or troop" (c. Īpparently an early Middle English merger of three related Old English nouns, flota "boat, fleet," flote "troop, flock," flot "body of water, sea " all from the source of float (v.).
t naturally happened that all these a- prefixes were at length confusedly lumped together in idea, and the resultant a- looked upon as vaguely intensive, rhetorical, euphonic, or even archaic, and wholly otiose. had been reduced to a in the ancestor of Old French. In words from Romanic languages, often it represents reduced forms of Latin ad "to, toward for" (see ad-), or ab "from, away, off" (see ab-) both of which by about 7c. Such words sometimes were refashioned in early modern English as though the prefix were Latin ( accursed, allay, affright are examples). Or it can be the Old English intensive a-, originally ar- (cognate with German er- and probably implying originally "motion away from"), as in abide, arise, awake, ashamed, marking a verb as momentary, a single event. Or it can be a reduced form of the Old English past participle prefix ge-, as in aware. It also can represent Middle English of (prep.) "off, from," as in anew, afresh, akin, abreast. In words derived from Old English, it commonly represents Old English an "on, in, into" (see on (prep.)), as in alive, above, asleep, aback, abroad, afoot, ashore, ahead, abed, aside, obsolete arank "in rank and file," etc., forming adjectives and adverbs from nouns, with the notion "in, at engaged in." In this use it is identical to a (2).
Prefix or inseparable particle, a relic of various Germanic and Latin elements.