shipload

Noun

shipload (plural shiploads)

1. The amount (of cargo) that a ship can carry.
   • It might, under all the circumstances above stated, have been a question with other builders, whether to import one shipload of costly jaspers, or twenty of chalk flints; and whether to build a small church faced with porphyry and paved with agate, or to raise a vast cathedral in freestone.1853, John Ruskin, “IV, St. Mark's”, in The Stones of Venice, volume II (The Sea-Stories), London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, § XXVII, page 77
   • The Penrhyn slate quarry possibly dates back to the sixteenth century, as it appears that in 1580 Sion Tudor asked the Bishop of Bangor for a shipload of slate.1945 May and June, Charles E. Lee, “The Penrhyn Railway and its Locomotives—1”, in Railway Magazine, page 138
2. Minced oath of shitload.
   • But, providing you have access to a shipload of coloured pencils and a naughty boy to sharpen them, they are a good and valid classroom method with a variety of applications.2006 April 18, Philip Beadle, “Mind maps: rubbish in theory, but handy in practice”, in The Guardian, →ISSN