English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
What's the first word that comes to your mind when you see this? Also, please mention if British, US or another variant.
As someone who didn't grow up in an English-speaking country, I really have no idea what to call these, and Wikipedia lists altogether too many names for them.
A lifebelt is a common way to call it:
- A life preserver worn like a belt.
also:
- A lifebuoy, ring buoy, lifering, lifesaver, life donut, life preserver or lifebelt, also known as a "kisby ring" or "perry buoy", is a life saving buoy designed to be thrown to a person in the water, to provide buoyancy and prevent drowning. Some modern lifebuoys are fitted with one or more seawater-activated lights, to aid rescue at night.
Lifebelt is more common in BrE while life preserver in more common in AmE (see Ngram).
It is a bit complicated, and no doubt varies from region to region. In the US, I'd expect it to most often be called a lifebuoy, though life ring might also be used, as well as life preserver.
But life preserver is also commonly used to refer to a life jacket (see image below) and if you're wearing a life jacket you don't have such an urgent need for a lifebuoy.
I nominate lifesaver. Not only is this object the precise one described under the fourth definition in the American Heritage Dictionary 5th edition (©2016), but it is commonly enough known that there is a popular brand name of hardcandies named after it, so named because of the thick ring shape. You can see an advertisement for Pep-o-Mint Lifesavers on page 510 of Life Magazine, Volume 74, Issue 1925, which was published in 1919:
Aside from showing how the shape of the candy resembles its namesake, I doubt a word can be much more colloquial or well known than a century old candy that remains popular to this day, although these days lifesavers are usually fruit flavored rather than minty.
