ship

To ship two people is to want them to be in a relationship, whether they’re fictional characters, celebrities or your two friends who keep flirting. A ship is the pairing itself, and a shipper is a fan who roots for it. The word is short for “relationship.”

What shipping means

Merriam-Webster defines the verb as wishfully regarding two people or characters as being, or becoming, romantically involved. It started in fan communities, where people write fan fiction, make edits and argue about which characters belong together. Now it’s ordinary speech. People ship reality TV contestants, co-stars with good chemistry and, half-jokingly, mascots.

Fans often combine the two names into one ship name. Star Wars fans who wanted Rey and Kylo Ren together called the pairing Reylo.

Examples

• “I’ve shipped them since episode one and I will not be taking questions.”
• “My ship finally became canon!”
• “Okay but I kind of ship you two.”

Where it came from

Shipping comes from fans of The X-Files in the 1990s. Viewers who wanted Mulder and Scully to get together called themselves “relationshippers,” which shrank to “R’shippers” and then “shippers.” Wikipedia, citing the Oxford English Dictionary, dates the earliest uses of “ship” and “shipper” to 1996 Usenet posts in an X-Files newsgroup, “shipping” to 1997 and the verb to 1998. Merriam-Webster added the verb sense in January 2021.

Ship words you’ll see

• Canon ship: a pairing that actually happens in the story.
• Sunk ship: a pairing the story has ruled out.
• Shipping war: fans of rival pairings arguing, sometimes for years.
• OTP: your one true pairing, your favorite ship of all.

Related terms

• OTP: one true pairing.
• Stan: an extremely devoted fan.
• Canon event: a moment that has to happen.
• Parasocial relationship: a one-sided bond with a celebrity.

See more terms like this in our internet slang dictionary.