Boat people are people who escape from their country in small boats to travel to another country in the hope that they will be able to live there.
...50,000 Vietnamese boat people.
boat people in British English
plural noun
refugees, esp from Vietnam in the late 1970s, who leave by boat hoping to be picked up by ships of another country
boat people in American English
refugees from a certain country or region who try to immigrate to some other country, using small boats; specif., such refugees fromSoutheast Asia in the late 1970s
Examples of 'boat people' in a sentence
boat people
You've got to be willing to leave the boat people behind.
Christianity Today (2000)
In other languages
boat people
British English: boat people NOUN
Boat people are people who escape from their country in small boats to travel to another country in the hope that they will be able to live there.
They fled the country as boat people.
American English: boat people
Brazilian Portuguese: refugiados que fogem a barco
Chinese: 坐小船逃出国的难民
European Spanish: balseros
French: boat people
German: Bootsflüchtlinge
Italian: migranti su imbarcazioni di fortuna
Japanese: ボート難民
Korean: 다른 나라로 망명하기 위해 작은 보트를 타고 자기 나라를 탈출하는 사람
European Portuguese: refugiados que fogem de barco