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:
Weir and a small crew are sent on a recovery mission after the lost spaceship, the Event Horizon, suddenly reappears in orbit around Neptune, issuing a distress signal.
From Salon ● Jul. 17, 2026
The spaceship traveled a little more than 62 miles above California’s Mojave Desert, as thousands of people watched from the ground.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 15, 2026
I didn’t need Dreyfuss to step off a spaceship gangplank and say, “I’m back.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 10, 2026
It's been nicknamed the "Obamalisk" and compared to a Star Wars spaceship and the Eye of Sauron from "The Lord of the Rings".
From Barron's ● Jun. 4, 2026
Or, from a spaceship movie I had seen once: “Klatu barada nikto!”
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
During a playdate, my son and his Lego-loving friend mounted an epic space battle with the Smart Play spaceships.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 18, 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
Nominally designed as a spaceport, Lego aliens and spaceships populate the area.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 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
Similarly with spaceships: no matter how much rocket power they have, they can’t accelerate beyond the speed of light.
From "A Brief History of Time: And Other Essays" by Stephen Hawking
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.
