whatever floats your boat

The earliest evidence hints that the phrase originated in the late 1970s among pleasure boaters in the United States.^[1][2]

• Audio (General Australian):

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whatever floats your boat

1. (originally US, informal, idiomatic) One should do whatever stimulates one or suits one's inclinations.

   Synonyms: whatever butters your biscuit, whatever butters your biscuits, whatever butters your bread, whatever butters your muffin, whatever butters your toast, whatever humps your camel, whatever melts your butter, whatever sizzles your bacon, whatever tickles your pickle, whatever winds your clock

   • 2025 May 17, James Parker, “Return of the Shaman”, in The Atlantic‎^[2], →ISSN:

     You can achieve a non-ordinary or altered state with drugs, drumming, dancing, fasting, meditation, whatever floats your boat—floats it into the beyond, that is.

   • 2025, “The Hymn of the North”, in Jarvis Cocker (lyrics), More, performed by Pulp:

     You can fill your life with love / You can fill your life with owt / You can fill your lifе with food and drink / Or whatever floats your boat

• Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder, Fred R. Shapiro, editors (2012), “Whatever floats your boat”, in The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs, New Haven: Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 23