Word.ws English Dictionary

Q-ship

Q-ship noun: a merchant ship with concealed weaponry, designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks.

Noun

Q-ship (plural Q-ships)

  1. (historical) A merchant ship with concealed weaponry, designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks.
    • Q-ships were usually armed with one 4-inch and two 12-pounder guns. These were hidden behind hinged bulwarks, inside false superstructures and false deck cargoes, or under dummy lifeboats.2005, Spencer Tucker, Priscilla Mary Roberts, World War I: Encyclopedia, ABC-Clio, →ISBN, page 956
    Synonyms:
    Q-boat

Synonyms of Q-ship

Forms of Q-ship

pluralQ-ships

Origin of Q-ship

Short for Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland, the home port of the British Q-ships, when they were first implemented in World War I.

Questions about Q-ship

What does Q-ship mean?
Q-ship means a merchant ship with concealed weaponry, designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks.
What part of speech is Q-ship?
Q-ship is a noun.
What is the plural of Q-ship?
The plural of Q-ship is Q-ships.

Words near Q-ship in the dictionary

  1. Q-pop
  2. Q-principle
  3. Q-Q plot
  4. Q-Q plots
  5. Q-shaped
  6. Q-ship
  7. Q-ships
  8. Q-slur
  9. Q-slurred
  10. Q-slurring
  11. Q-slurs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Q-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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