How to Use boat people in a Sentence

boat people

plural noun
Definition of boat peoplenext
  • The boat people, they were called, and Ms. Le was one of them.
    — Neil Genzlinger, New York Times, 23 Dec. 2017
  • Many of the refugees who escaped in small boats came to be called the boat people.
    — CBS News, 10 Mar. 2018
  • Our parents came to the U.S. as refugees, as boat people.
    — NBC News, 1 Oct. 2020
  • The story attached to me was that of a poor Haitian dirty kid who was part of the boat people family.
    — Jeneé Osterheldt, kansascity, 6 Sep. 2017
  • There is a way to do this, and boat people tend to like things done the right way, because their vessel, and people's lives, often depend on it.
    — Popular Mechanics Editors, Popular Mechanics, 17 June 2016
  • Among the voluntarily naked British citizens on the beach, the first thing observed was that the boat people had no bags.
    — Hermione Hoby, Harper's Magazine, 22 June 2021
  • Consider Hanh Tran, born in Boston, her mother one of the boat people who fled Vietnam after the war.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 27 Mar. 2021
  • The same bars that are open in the summer for fishing and boating people—generally on a lake—they’ll stay open for packs of snowmobiles to come in and get a beer.
    — Julie Beck, The Atlantic, 23 Feb. 2018
  • Some of the boat people faced serious charges related to pro-democracy activism or their role in last year’s protests.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 1 Sep. 2020
  • There were thousands of boat people trying to escape Vietnam during this time.
    — Lisa Tran, Bon Appétit, 12 Feb. 2021
  • Gus’s Community Market opened, becoming a gathering place for both the boat people and condo dwellers.
    — J.k. Dineen, SFChronicle.com, 15 July 2019
  • In 2015, four Malaysian navy ships began searching for stranded boat people in the first official rescue operation since desperate migrants started washing up on Southeast Asia’s shores.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 21 May 2020
  • Like other Communist paradises, Cuba’s greatest export was boat people.
    — Mona Charen, National Review, 26 Feb. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'boat people.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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