container ship

American  

[kuhn-tey-ner ship] / kənˈteɪ nər ˌʃɪp /

Or containership

noun

Transportation.

1. a large ship that transports its cargo in truck-size containers that can be transferred from ship to train to truck without unloading and reloading the contents.

   Container ships may be a common sight today, but the arrival of the first American ones in European ports made headlines in the shipping journals of the time.

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Etymology

Origin of container ship

First recorded in 1955–60

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

container ship

Sailing from Busan New Port, the container ship -- the "PanStar Acro" -- will sail to Europe via the Arctic, testing whether a route opened by melting sea ice can be commercially viable.

From Barron's ● Aug. 22, 2026

That means they have about five times more cargo space than an airplane, but are five times smaller in length than a typical container ship.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 22, 2026

A Hapag-Lloyd container ship chartered to Maersk was one of several vessels reportedly struck by Iran during the war.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 16, 2026

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz as well as tensions in the Red Sea are reshaping trade routes, with Africa becoming a hub of global container ship traffic, according to logistics and maritime sources.

From Barron's ● May 1, 2026

My father had told us about the actual, real-life Grande Gongo, a cutting-edge container ship docked in Korea and flying the Italian flag.

From "Confessions of a Murder Suspect" by James Patterson