Definition
nounA water-borne vessel generally larger than a boat.
nounA vessel which travels through any medium other than across land, such as an airship or spaceship.
Sentence Examples
Which goes faster, a ship or a train?
We saw another ship far ahead.
The ship was dredged from the depths of the ocean.
Word Origin & History
Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *sek-?
Proto-Indo-European *-éyti
Proto-Indo-European *skey-der.?
Proto-Germanic *skipą
Proto-West Germanic *skip
Old English scip
Middle English schip
English ship
From Middle English chip, schepe, schip, schup, scip, scippe, ship, shup, ssip, from Old English sċip, sċyp, from Proto-West Germanic *skip, from Proto-Germanic *skipą (“ship; tub, vessel”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *skey- (“to split”). More at shift.
Cognates
Cognate with North Frisian schap, skap, Skep (“ship”), Saterland Frisian Schip, Skip (“ship”), West Frisian skip (“ship”), Central Franconian Scheff (“ship”), Dutch schip (“ship”), German Schiff (“ship”), Low German Schipp (“ship”), Luxembourgish Schëff (“ship”), Vilamovian śejf, siejft (“ship”), Yiddish שיף (shif, “ship”), Danish skib (“ship”), Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk skip (“ship”), Swedish skepp (“ship”), Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌹𐍀 (skip, “ship”).
Compare typologically boat, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyd-.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"I don't know if there is another standard method, but the following approach works: Consider the collision of gliders from three rakes that produces a medium spaceship in the _same_ direction as the rake. This ship will follow along to the next collision point, which will not produce a spaceship, but rather some stable garbage, consisting of a block and a beehive."
— 1991 January 10, Paul Callahan, “Questions and comments about Conway's Life (long)”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet):
"Aside from the one ship in B3/S124 shown above, the only spaceships of this size (with period up to 20) in any of these rules are the Life glider and the three known from B2/ (each of which also is found in some variants of the Life or B2/ rules)."
— 1995 November 12, Rich Holmes, “Totalistic spaceships”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet):
"While constructing a butterfly double gun I put one cell at the wrong site and the result was highly surprising: my pattern turned to a big, beautiful ship, very similar to those found in Aqua25 from Al Hensel's collection!"
— 1999 June 23, Mirek Wojtowicz, “What else has Brian in his Brain?”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet):
"But there are no ships, and no natural traffic lights or honey farms. The ship self destructs, and the predecessors to the traffic lights and honey farms self-destruct in spectacular manners."
— 1994 May 7, David Bell, “HighLife - An Interesting Variant of Life (part 1/3)”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet):
"In the case of these "ship" neighborhoods, birth will occur at the center cell, thus deviating from the "overcrowding" rule of Life (HighLife allows such a birth in all neighborhoods containing 6 cells)."
— 1994 June 5, Paul Callahan, “Interesting life program”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet):