ship
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A vessel which travels through any medium other than across land, such as an airship or spaceship.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
shipIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈʃɪp
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
chiefly in combination
A vessel which travels through any medium other than across land, such as an airship or spaceship.
nautical
A water-borne vessel generally larger than a boat.
cellular automatachiefly in combination
A spaceship.
A dish or utensil (originally fashioned like the hull of a ship) used to hold incense.
verb
Transport commercially
transitive
To send by water-borne transport.
transitive
To send (a parcel or container) to a recipient (by any means of transport).
transitive
To take in or take on (water) over the sides of a vessel.
colloquialwith dummy it
To leave, depart, scram.
Place on board a ship
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- General English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A vessel which travels through any medium other than across land, such as an airship or spaceship.
Used this way, 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.
Nearby words
- send , a specialist term, precise but narrower
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use ship
- “We will ship your order out tomorrow morning from the warehouse.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The commercial enterprise of moving goods and materials.
Someone who ships goods.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Goods carried by a large vehicle.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A shipboard system consisting of an acoustic detection system that is towed behind the ship.
A lane at sea that is a regularly used route for vessels.
A warship intended for combat.
An impost levied in England to provide money for ships for national defense.
A dealer in equipment and supplies for ships.
A canal large enough for seagoing vessels.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A workplace where ships are built or repaired.
The construction of ships.
A wrecked ship (or a part of one).
A dealer in sails and ropes and other supplies for sailing ships.
Crew of a ship including the officers.
The area for food preparation on a ship.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: vessel which travels through any medium other than across land
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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.