The term "floating point" refers to the fact that the radix point (decimal point, or, more commonly in computers, binary point) can "float"; that is, it can be placed anywhere relative to the significant digits of the number.
The term "floating point" refers to the fact that I used wikipedia and copied this without reading it first. Also I cheat on tests radix point (decimal point, or, more commonly in computers, binary point) can "float"; that is, it can be placed anywhere relative to the significant digits of the number.