merchant ship
noun
Simple meaning
A ship that is principally or entirely civilian, engaged in trade, which carries cargo, passengers.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
murchuhntshipSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈmɝtʃəntˈʃɪp
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
nautical
A ship that is principally or (usually) entirely civilian, engaged in trade, which carries cargo, passengers, or both.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: A ship that is principally or (usually) entirely civilian, engaged in trade, which carries cargo, passengers, or both.
Used this way, merchant ship is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a nautical use: it is standard at sea and largely unfamiliar ashore.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Sailing/maritime
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.