plate ship
plate ship noun: a galleon, especially a Spanish one, carrying a cargo of precious metals and other treasure.
Noun
plate ship (plural plate ships)
- A galleon, especially a Spanish one, carrying a cargo of precious metals and other treasure.
- Nor had the English Nation any Benefit of the Two Ships taken by Blake in September 1656 off the Coast of Spain; where one was sunk, another burnt, and two broke to pieces on the Shoar; so that of eight Plate Ships, but two got into Cadiz:1697, Roger Coke, chapter 2, in A Detection of the Court and State of England during the Four Last Reigns and the Inter-Regnum, London: Andrew Bell, page 388
- By serving the merchants, they […] enjoy the prospect of a near and certain advantage; they have not indeed any expectations of being suddenly enriched by a plate ship, and of gaining by one engagement such wealth as will enable them to spend the rest of their lives in ease and affluence; but they...1742, Lord Cholmondeley, Debate on Trade and Navigation, 1 June, 1742, in Samuel Johnson (editor), Debates in Parliament, London: John Stockdale, 1787, Volume 2, p. 219
Forms of plate ship
| plural | plate ships |
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Questions about plate ship
- What does plate ship mean?
- Plate ship means a galleon, especially a Spanish one, carrying a cargo of precious metals and other treasure.
- What part of speech is plate ship?
- Plate ship is a noun.
- What is the plural of plate ship?
- The plural of plate ship is plate ships.
Words near plate ship in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: plate ship (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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