longship

American

[lawng-ship, long-] / ˈlɔŋˌʃɪp, ˈlɒŋ- /

noun

a medieval ship used in northern Europe especially by the Norse, having a long, narrow, open hull, a single square sail, and a large number of oars, which provided most of the propulsion.

longship British

/ ˈlɒŋˌʃɪp /

noun

a narrow open vessel with oars and a square sail, used esp by the Vikings during medieval times

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of longship

First recorded in 1560–70; long ¹ + ship ¹

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.

See Examples For:

longship

"Matt Damon was very nice and very good. Never complained. Every one of the actors was out for a long time and it was very cold and sometimes rough," recalled the longship captain, Bjorn Ahlander.

From Barron's ● Aug. 18, 2026

With Unst's Viking heritage, we had always thought of the timespan from the longship to the spaceship.

From BBC ● Jul. 21, 2023

Funding will also go toward the development of a virtual reality model of a Viking Age longship by undergraduate researchers at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa.

From New York Times ● Jan. 10, 2023

The Oseberg ship, a surviving Viking longship discovered in a Viking burial mound in Norway and preserved in a dedicated museum in Oslo.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2020

It would have been a much different voyage if a longship from the islands had been waiting at Seagard as he'd hoped.

From "A Clash of Kings" by George R.R. Martin

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023