ship
noun
a vessel, especially a large oceangoing one propelled by sails or engines.
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ship
1 American
[ship]
/ ʃɪp /
noun
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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
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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:
Anything unexpectedly or especially moving, rousing, funny or strange, things that go against the grain of a production that wants to keep things controlled in order to bring the ship in on time.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 15, 2026
Rudderless ship just waiting for the right pirates to come along.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026
In 2012, Elliott Investment Management orchestrated the seizure of an Argentine naval ship in a battle over a debt default.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 13, 2026
A search and rescue operation was launched after contact was lost with the Virgo Transport 8 ship, which was carrying 243 people, as it encountered bad weather, Indonesia's search and rescue agency said.
From BBC ● Sep. 13, 2026
He crawled onshore and looked around for other signs of life, but he never saw another sailor from that ship again.
From "The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs" by Betty G. Birney
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
Landscape, earlier landskip, has the suffix which in English would be -ship.
From The Romance of Words (4th ed.) by Ernest Weekley
—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
The additional volumes shipped through those routes have offset more than 500 million barrels of lost flows through the Strait of Hormuz, or about 2.8 million barrels a day.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
Watch for the spikes in produce, meat and other perishable foods that have to be harvested and hauled on diesel-powered farm equipment and shipped on diesel-powered trucks.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 10, 2026
But, at that point, the FBI had not shipped all of the evidence found in Birmingham back to the US, let alone exhaustively analysed it.
From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2026
Huger wrote for instructions to Postmaster General Amos Kendall, as well as New York Postmaster Samuel Gouverneur, from whose office the offending literature had been shipped.
From Slate ● Sep. 4, 2026
They’ll be shipped across the country at the end of this month, and on April first there’s to be a special ceremony at the Science Museum in London.
From "Stormbreaker" by Anthony Horowitz
The escalating attacks on railways come after months of strikes on Black Sea shipping and alongside attacks on warehouses, agriculture, transport hubs and logistics centres around Kyiv and across the country.
From Barron's ● Sep. 14, 2026
It goes without saying that the ripple effects this will have on shipping and agriculture, and thus food prices, will be profound.
From Salon ● Sep. 14, 2026
Moreover, a planned meeting between Iran and other Gulf states Monday to discuss shipping routes was postponed, adding further pressure to prices.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026
The Houthis have been cementing their hold on the Bab Al-Mandab strait, a vital shipping corridor linking Europe and Asia that has been used as an alternative to Hormuz.
From Barron's ● Sep. 14, 2026
Captain Billy’s son Otis ran the crab shipping part of his father’s business, while his father and two brothers ran the ferry.
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.
