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.
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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
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to go on board or travel by ship; embark.
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to engage to serve on a ship.
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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:
Systems engineer Anthony Gamerman joined the procession from Nvidia to Etched in April, in part because so many of the people he most admired had already jumped ship.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
"It was just non-stop noise. The ship is just always loud," he says.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
Rather than recreating a ship with computer-generated images, Nolan wanted a real one, capable of sailing on the open sea with flesh-and-blood men aboard.
From Barron's ● Aug. 18, 2026
Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run has used Unreal Engine since the ride’s debut in 2019 to create a dynamic landscape out of the front window of Han Solo’s famed ship.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 17, 2026
And then on Cat Neely’s yarn: Let the ship she sailed bring her to a happy place.
From "Nory Ryan’s Song" by Patricia Reilly Giff
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.
Landscape, earlier landskip, has the suffix which in English would be -ship.
From The Romance of Words (4th ed.) by Ernest Weekley
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
Pal researched multi-GPU parallelization, or ways of stitching many chips together, at Nvidia, and later co-founded Auradine, a bitcoin miner, where he designed what he describes as the lowest-voltage chip ever shipped.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
Most of that is oil which will be shipped to Europe for refining before being sold on the open market.
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 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
Many wafers shipped in 2Q were priced when they were produced in 4Q or 1Q.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
Adams and two of the other nurses were assigned to the 12th Evacuation Hospital at Cu Chi and shipped out on the same cargo plane as Denny.
From "Boots on the Ground: America's War in Vietnam" by Elizabeth Partridge
Iran says it is working to finalize a joint statement with Oman on a plan to manage shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026
Iranian negotiators have held discussions with Oman in recent weeks over a provisional arrangement to manage shipping through the strait, but no tangible outcome has yet emerged.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
But Iranian officials said on Monday they were close to finalising a deal with Oman on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 2026
Think of American shipping companies plundering British ships, which was common practice once upon a time.
From Salon ● Aug. 17, 2026
Captain Billy’s son Otis emerged from the unpainted crab shipping shed.
From "Jacob Have I Loved" by Katherine Paterson
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.
