spaceship
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of spaceship
Explanation
A vehicle that travels outside the earth's atmosphere is a spaceship. If you want to walk around on the moon some day, you'll have to get there in a spaceship. Any craft that carries people or equipment through space is a spaceship, though you could also call it a "rocket ship." Traveling through the universe, far from Earth or just outside its atmosphere, definitely requires a spaceship. Spaceship was originally borrowed from 19th- and 20th-century science fiction, and even today the term is considered less scientific than spacecraft or space vehicle.
Vocabulary lists containing spaceship
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Its plans at the time were well-documented, with the Walt Disney Co. initially giving Westcot, as it was to be called, a spherical answer to the Florida park’s Spaceship Earth.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 24, 2026
Spaceship Neptune is more of a balloon than a rocket.
From Seattle Times • May 11, 2024
After screenings, the festival hosted film parties; attendees could enter a waiting area known as The Spaceship and then step into a virtual film lounge.
From Washington Post • Feb. 4, 2022
Park My Spaceship is the simple, extremely amusing app I didn’t know I needed.
From The Verge • Dec. 25, 2021
We were posing in front of the Spaceship Earth geosphere at Epcot for my thirteenth birthday.
From "Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence" by Sonja Thomas
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
