Word.ws English Dictionary

unship

unship verb: to unload cargo from a ship or other vessel.

Verb

unship (third-person singular simple present unships, present participle unshipping, simple past and past participle unshipped)

  1. To unload cargo from a ship or other vessel.
  2. (transitive) To remove (an oar, a mast, etc.) from its normal position.
    • Dan sluiced the pen energetically, unshipped the table, set it up to dry in the moonlight, ran the red knife-blades through a wad of oakum, and began to sharpen them on a tiny grindstone […]1897, Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous
  3. (archaic) To throw from a horse; to unseat.
    • Ben hired a nag, but 'twould stumble of course, / And by falling endanger poor Ben, / Aye, and over her bows, sir, this crazy old horse / Would unship, and unship him again.1823 February 8, L. O., “Ballast”, in The Mirror, number XV, page 240
    • Before starting Mytton posted a wagoner at a spot on the "course" where the slope was steep, and gave him orders to cry "Whoa!" as the horses passed him. The man did so, with the result that two of the friends were unshipped by the abruptness of the stop to which their clumsy mounts came on hearing...1901 October 11, “Gleanings”, in The Agricultural Journal and Mining Record, volume 4, number 16, page 497

Forms of unship

third-person singular presentunships
present participleunshipping
past participleunshipped
pastunshipped

Origin of unship

From un- + ship.

Words formed from unship

Questions about unship

What does unship mean?
Unship means to unload cargo from a ship or other vessel.
What part of speech is unship?
Unship is a verb.
What is the past tense of unship?
The past tense of unship is unshipped.

Words near unship in the dictionary

  1. unshimmering
  2. unshined
  3. unshingled
  4. unshining
  5. unshiny
  6. unship
  7. unshiplike
  8. unshipment
  9. unshipments
  10. unshippable
  11. unshipped

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unship (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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