Shipwreck

How to spell shipwreck

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shipwreck

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shipwreck mean?

1. nounThe destruction of a ship at sea, or the wrecked remains of such a vessel.
2. verbTo cause a ship to be destroyed, or to be stranded by such destruction.

Shipwreck in a sentence

• noun

  Divers explored the shipwreck resting on the seabed.

• verb

  The captain feared the reef might shipwreck his vessel.

• noun

  The storm caused a shipwreck off the rocky coast.

• verb

  A sudden squall could shipwreck even a sturdy boat.

Where does shipwreck come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This is a compound of two old English words, 'ship' and 'wreck'. The first element comes from Old English 'scip', the common Germanic word for a seagoing vessel. The second, 'wreck', is the more interesting half: it entered English through Anglo-Norman 'wrec' but ultimately traces back to Old Norse 'wrek', meaning 'flotsam' or 'wreckage washed ashore', which itself relates to the verb 'reka', 'to drive or push' (as the sea drives broken timber onto the beach). For centuries 'wreck' referred specifically to goods cast up by the tide, and only later did it broaden to mean any act or result of destruction. The combined form 'shipwreck' appears in English from around the 1400s, describing both the disaster itself and the battered remains. The spelling trap is the silent 'w' in 'wreck', a leftover from the older Norse pronunciation that English has long since dropped.

How the word is built

• ship (vessel)
• wreck (destruction, ruin)