spaceship
Americannoun
-
spaceships
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of spaceship
Explanation
A vehicle that travels outside the earth's atmosphere is a spaceship. If you want to walk around on the moon some day, you'll have to get there in a spaceship. Any craft that carries people or equipment through space is a spaceship, though you could also call it a "rocket ship." Traveling through the universe, far from Earth or just outside its atmosphere, definitely requires a spaceship. Spaceship was originally borrowed from 19th- and 20th-century science fiction, and even today the term is considered less scientific than spacecraft or space vehicle.
Vocabulary lists containing spaceship
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:
I keep thinking about the spaceship in Pixar’s “WALL-E,” the Axiom, where every human need has been anticipated and met.
From Salon ● Oct. 11, 2026
The New York City office has a spaceship vibe with spa-like comfort.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 5, 2026
George Lucas and Mellody Hobson want their massive spaceship of a museum to be an experience.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026
As well as claustrophobic spaceship corridors, in the sequel you will also be avoiding the Alien in bigger, open air spaces.
From BBC ● Aug. 29, 2026
An arrow zipped past it, missing completely, and I dropped from the spaceship onto the top of a floor exhibit, a huge model of the earth.
From "The Titan's Curse" by Rick Riordan
Most of those interviewed shared the critics’ judgment that “Altman has a relentless will to power that, even among industrialists who put their names on spaceships, sets him apart.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026
Yet, as Lucas is a legendary lug nut, these hover cars and spaceships whisk you full speed into his creative process.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026
The restart of commercial missions with a mothership and two Delta spaceships opens up the potential for $450 million in annual revenue across 125 flights, analysts at Jefferies said.
From Barron's ● Apr. 6, 2026
The spaceships of the future—the ones we imagine, or design on paper—have the signature feature of never blowing up.
From Slate ● Dec. 9, 2025
Our present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future human expeditions to the planets.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
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.
