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• ship
  ship

  noun

  a vessel, especially a large oceangoing one propelled by sails or engines.
• -ship
  -ship

  a native English suffix of nouns denoting condition, character, office, skill, etc..

ship

¹ American  

[ship] / ʃɪp /

noun

1. a vessel, especially a large oceangoing one propelled by sails or engines.

2. Nautical.

   1. a sailing vessel square-rigged on all of three or more masts, having jibs, staysails, and a spanker on the aftermost mast.

   2. Now Rare. a bark having more than three masts.

3. the crew and, sometimes, the passengers of a vessel.

   The captain gave shore leave to the whole ship.

4. an airship, airplane, or spacecraft.

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verb (used with object)

shipped, shipping

1. to put or take on board a ship or other means of transportation; to send or transport by ship, rail, truck, plane, etc.

2. Nautical. to take in (water) over the side, as a vessel does when waves break over it.

3. to bring (an object) into a ship or boat.

4. to engage (someone) for service on a ship.

5. to fix in a ship or boat in the proper place for use.

6. to place (an oar) in proper position for rowing.

7. to send away.

   They shipped the kids off to camp for the summer.

verb (used without object)

shipped, shipping

1. to go on board or travel by ship; embark.

2. to engage to serve on a ship.

3. 1. to be sent or transported by ship, rail, truck, plane, etc..

      Both packages shipped this morning.

   2. to permit of being transported by any of these means.

      Fresh raspberries do not ship well.

verb phrase

1. ship out

   1. to leave, especially for another country or assignment.

      He said goodbye to his family and shipped out for the West Indies.

   2. to send away, especially to another country or assignment.

   3. Informal. to quit, resign, or be fired from a job.

      Shape up or ship out!

idioms

1. jump ship,

   1. 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.

   2. to withdraw support or membership from a group, organization, cause, etc.; defect or desert.

      Some of the more liberal members have jumped ship.

2. when one's ship comes in / home, when one's fortune is assured.

   She'll buy a house when her ship comes in.

3. 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

1. a romantic relationship between fictional characters, as in fan fiction, or between famous people, whether or not the romance actually exists in the book, show, etc., or in real life.

   the TV show's most popular ships.

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verb (used with or without object)

shipped, shipping

1. to take an interest in or hope for a romantic relationship between (fictional characters or famous people), whether or not the romance actually exists.

   I'm shipping those guys—they would make a great couple!

-ship ³ American  

1. a native English suffix of nouns denoting condition, character, office, skill, etc..

   clerkship; friendship; statesmanship.

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ship ¹ British  

/ ʃɪp /

noun

1. 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

2. nautical a large sailing vessel with three or more square-rigged masts

3. the crew of a ship

4. short for airship spaceship

5. informal any vehicle or conveyance

6. when one has become successful or wealthy

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verb

1. to place, transport, or travel on any conveyance, esp aboard a ship

   ship the microscopes by aeroplane

   can we ship tomorrow?

2. (tr) nautical to take (water) over the side

3. to bring or go aboard a vessel

   to ship oars

4. informal to send away, often in order to be rid of

   they shipped the children off to boarding school

5. (intr) to engage to serve aboard a ship

   I shipped aboard a Liverpool liner

6. informal (tr) to concede (a goal)

   Celtic have shipped eight goals in three away matches

-ship ² British  

suffix

1. indicating state or condition

   fellowship

2. indicating rank, office, or position

   lordship

3. indicating craft or skill

   horsemanship

   workmanship

   scholarship

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ship More Idioms  

More idioms and phrases containing ship

• desert a sinking ship
• enough to sink a ship
• shape up (or ship out)
• tight ship
• when one's ship comes in

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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

• misship
  verb
• preship
  verb (used with object)
• shipless
  adjective
• shippable
  adjective
• shiplessly
  adverb

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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

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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

See Examples For:

ship -ship shipped shipping

“After six long years of navigating AMC through uncharted waters, we can finally say with relief that we have brought our ship into port.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2026

Adam Aron told analysts that after years of navigating the company through uncharted waters, he has brought the ship into port.

From Barron's ● Nov. 5, 2026

She was in shock and soon set about buying $500 worth of matching merchandise they paraded around the ship in.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 4, 2026

The environmental campaigners' ship, Arctic Sunrise, sailed off the Norfolk coast to release the rocks without a licence over the weekend before mooring in Great Yarmouth.

From BBC ● Nov. 3, 2026

Barrels of tea were dragged across the deck of the ship, laid on their sides and hacked at with the crude hatchets until they cracked open like eggs, revealing the rich dark tea inside.

From "Glitch" by Laura Martin

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

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

—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.

From Notes and Queries, Vol. IV, Number 101, October 4, 1851 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. by Various

What couldn’t be shipped had to be improvised.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 6, 2026

For example, building materials and boxed water — which, Arnaquq-Baril says, was chosen over plastic bottles to leave “less toxic garbage in the Arctic” — were shipped by sealift.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 6, 2026

"Over three million people shipped, really with the British state's complicity, over a long period of time, couple of centuries actually, hundreds of thousands of them didn't make it and died," the foreign secretary said.

From BBC ● Nov. 4, 2026

Alaskans feel it more acutely than other Americans, he said, because the state's distance means "everything is shipped in, and everything is dependent on fuel costs."

From Barron's ● Nov. 3, 2026

Regina, ever irrepressible and somehow aware of the adverse weather, shipped a pair of galoshes to her son and admonished herself for not insisting that he take his leather coat when he left the States.

From "Endgame" by Frank Brady

The closure, which begins Saturday, has been years in the making and included impact-mitigation meetings between Caltrans officials, neighboring communities, shipping companies, labor unions and the contractor.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 6, 2026

Talks have centered on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for global shipping, and curtailing Iran’s nuclear program.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2026

Wedbush’s Bryson noted, too, that if demand falls off for Micron’s memory chips, the company will have a problem not only shipping as many chips as expected, but also pricing them so high.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 6, 2026

The company is only just shipping its first fuel cells to Texas, where it has been underexposed as developers in the state favor natural-gas combustion technology, Dendrinos said.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 5, 2026

"Didn't your mom say Nergal smuggled himself here? Easy to do in a shipping container."

From "City of the Plague God" by Sarwat Chadda

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