Battleship

How to spell battleship

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce battleship

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does battleship mean?

1. nounA large, heavily armoured warship carrying powerful guns, historically the most formidable vessel in a navy's fleet.

Battleship in a sentence

• The museum preserves a retired battleship as a floating exhibit.

• The navy decommissioned its last battleship decades ago.

Where does battleship come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a straightforward English compound joining 'battle' and 'ship', but its naval meaning is a shortening of the older phrase 'line-of-battle ship'. In the age of sail, warships were ranked by how many guns they carried, and the most powerful were strong enough to stand in the main fighting line, hence 'line-of-battle ship'. By the middle of the nineteenth century English speakers had clipped this to 'battleship'. The 'battle' element travelled into English through Old French bataille, from the Late Latin battualia meaning 'fencing or fighting exercises', while 'ship' is a native Germanic word descended from Old English scip. Because both parts are familiar everyday words, the only real spelling care is remembering it is written as one solid word with a double 't' inherited from 'battle'.

How the word is built

• battle (from Old French bataille: a fight)
• ship (from Old English scip: vessel)