ship
noun
a vessel, especially a large oceangoing one propelled by sails or engines.
ship
1 American
[ship]
/ ʃɪp /
noun
-
a vessel, especially a large oceangoing one propelled by sails or engines.
-
Nautical.
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a sailing vessel square-rigged on all of three or more masts, having jibs, staysails, and a spanker on the aftermost mast.
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Now Rare. a bark having more than three masts.
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the crew and, sometimes, the passengers of a vessel.
The captain gave shore leave to the whole ship.
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an airship, airplane, or spacecraft.
verb (used with object)
shipped,
shipping
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to put or take on board a ship or other means of transportation; to send or transport by ship, rail, truck, plane, etc.
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Nautical. to take in (water) over the side, as a vessel does when waves break over it.
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to bring (an object) into a ship or boat.
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to engage (someone) for service on a ship.
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to fix in a ship or boat in the proper place for use.
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to place (an oar) in proper position for rowing.
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to send away.
They shipped the kids off to camp for the summer.
verb (used without object)
shipped,
shipping
-
to go on board or travel by ship; embark.
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to engage to serve on a ship.
-
-
to be sent or transported by ship, rail, truck, plane, etc..
Both packages shipped this morning.
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to permit of being transported by any of these means.
Fresh raspberries do not ship well.
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verb phrase
idioms
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jump ship,
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to escape from a ship, especially one in foreign waters or a foreign port, as to avoid further service as a sailor or to request political asylum.
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to withdraw support or membership from a group, organization, cause, etc.; defect or desert.
Some of the more liberal members have jumped ship.
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when one's ship comes in / home, when one's fortune is assured.
She'll buy a house when her ship comes in.
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run a tight ship, to exercise a close, strict control over a ship's crew, a company, an organization, or the like.
ship
2
American
[ship]
/ ʃɪp /
noun
verb (used with or without object)
shipped,
shipping
-ship
3
American
ship
1
British
/ ʃɪp /
noun
-
a vessel propelled by engines or sails for navigating on the water, esp a large vessel that cannot be carried aboard another, as distinguished from a boat
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nautical a large sailing vessel with three or more square-rigged masts
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the crew of a ship
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informal any vehicle or conveyance
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when one has become successful or wealthy
verb
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to place, transport, or travel on any conveyance, esp aboard a ship
ship the microscopes by aeroplane
can we ship tomorrow?
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(tr) nautical to take (water) over the side
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to bring or go aboard a vessel
to ship oars
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informal to send away, often in order to be rid of
they shipped the children off to boarding school
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(intr) to engage to serve aboard a ship
I shipped aboard a Liverpool liner
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informal (tr) to concede (a goal)
Celtic have shipped eight goals in three away matches
-ship
2
British
suffix
-
indicating state or condition
fellowship
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indicating rank, office, or position
lordship
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indicating craft or skill
horsemanship
workmanship
scholarship
ship
More Idioms
Usage
What does -ship mean? The suffix -ship is used to form nouns to indicate a "state of being" or "skill." It is often used in everyday and technical terms. The suffix -ship comes from Old English -scipe, meaning “shape.” Yes, shape. Discover why at our entry for shape. The Latin-derived equivalent of -scipe is -form, from Latin -fōrmis, meaning “having the shape of.” This suffix appears in words such as fungiform and oviform. To learn more, check out our Words That Use article on -form.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of ship1
First recorded before 900; Middle English, Old English noun scip, scipp; cognate with Dutch schip, German Schiff, Old Norse, Gothic skip; verb derivative of the noun
Origin of ship2
First recorded in 1995–2000; shortening of relationship
Origin of -ship3
Middle English, Old English -scipe; akin to shape; cognate with dialectal Frisian, dialectal Dutch schip
Explanation
A ship is a large sea-going vessel, and it's also a way to transport goods. You can ship things on a ship — but, confusingly, you can also ship them on a truck or a train. A ship is like a boat, only larger — some definitions of a sailing ship say it has at least three masts. A cruise ship transports a large number of people in what is basically a floating hotel. A cargo ship, on the other hand, transports goods being imported and exported between countries. One guess about the origin of ship links it to a Germanic word meaning "hollowed-out tree."
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:
Describing the council as a "tightly run ship", a spokesperson said it had faced "the perfect storm" of a decade of reduced government funding and year-on-year rises in service costs.
From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026
Navy captain who is on duty nearby and gets an unexpected distress signal from the cargo ship, is decisive and strong.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 2026
In 1998, the price tag for Zumwalts was estimated at $1.5 billion per ship, according to the Government Accountability Office.
From Salon ● Aug. 20, 2026
He listed several activities that he said need to stop immediately: "oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies."
From Barron's ● Aug. 20, 2026
Elisha thought about abandoning ship and returning to Upernavik, Greenland, but worried that it was too late in the year to try to make the treacherous overland trip on sledges.
From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock
The intimate relationship between the three languages is there in the very word “relationship”, a trilingualism love child, “relation” both French and Latin, -ship an Anglo-Saxon suffix.
From The Guardian ● Sep. 6, 2019
—The termination "-ship" is the Anglo-Saxon scipe, scype, from verb scipan, to create, form; and hence as a termination of nouns denotes form, condition, office, dignity.
Line-end hyphens were retained in past participles in i-, y- and equivalent, and after the prefixes out- and to-; they were omitted before common endings such as -lich, -ship, -ness, -full.
From A Concise Dictionary of Middle English From A.D. 1150 to 1580 by A. L. (Anthony Lawson) Mayhew
Landscape, earlier landskip, has the suffix which in English would be -ship.
From The Romance of Words (4th ed.) by Ernest Weekley
Accelerators without Nvidia’s software became obsolete within a few years as models changed, she said, while Nvidia’s own A100 chips, shipped six years ago, are still fully in use.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 20, 2026
Last year, Unitree shipped more than 5,500 humanoid robots, a scale well beyond what American robot startups have achieved so far.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
Over the last few months independent booksellers have been observing a strange pattern of purchases which have seen scores of their novels being shipped to far-off warehouses.
From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2026
Most of that gets shipped to landfills outside the city, costing taxpayers around $500 million every year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026
I glared at him, sitting in the next room eating Oreos and watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, blissfully unaware that his sisters might get shipped back to the Islamic Republic.
From "Americanized" by Sara Saedi
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Iran are no closer to resolving their stalemate, and an agreement on shipping crude oil and crude products through the Strait of Hormuz remains elusive.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 20, 2026
The Panama Canal will reduce shipping volumes from next month because of a drought fueled by the El Nino phenomenon, the operator of the strategic waterway linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans said Thursday.
From Barron's ● Aug. 20, 2026
He sent home $1,500 and said he was shipping back a vehicle, Goodho said.
From Barron's ● Aug. 19, 2026
The startup has booked more than $1 billion in orders and already started shipping chips.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
Data management technician for a small shipping company.
From "Scythe" by Neal Shusterman
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.
