shipwreck

Etymology

It is formed from English ship + wrack (“something cast up by the sea”), later remodelled after the related wreck, which was already felt as a variant of wrack in the early modern period.^[2][3] Etymonline and the Shorter Oxford take it simply as ship and wreck.^[4][5] Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com trace it through schipwrak to Old English scipwræc, formed from scip (“ship”) and wræc (“something driven by the sea”);^[3][6] Bosworth–Toller glosses the Old English word as what is cast up from a wreck, citing Latin charters that give it as the English name for such goods.^[7] The OED, however, finds no reliable Old English record: the Ramsey Abbey charter often cited for it is a 12th-century forgery whose lost original very probably lacked the word.^[2] The usual earlier word for the loss of a ship was schipbreke (late 14th century), from a North Sea Germanic word; compare West Frisian skipbrek, Middle Dutch schipbroke and German Schiffbruch.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The remains of a wrecked ship, or the goods cast up from it: late Old English in the Shorter Oxford, about 1100 in Etymonline,^[5][4] and the 12th century in Merriam-Webster.^[3] The OED's first record, from 1482 in Caxton's translation of Higden's Polychronicon, already has the sense of the loss of a ship at sea.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The sense "loss of a ship by foundering" is dated by Etymonline to the mid-15th century and by the OED to 1482.^[4][2] A figurative sense, total ruin, came in with Tyndale's translation of 1 Timothy (1526), in the phrase to make shipwreck, to come to ruin.^[2] The noun for wreckage, at first the salvaged remains or cargo of a ship (1550), now means a wrecked ship itself.^[2] The verb was formed from the noun, first in a figurative sense, to bring to ruin (1561);^[2] the literal "to cause someone to suffer shipwreck" follows in 1589, in Greene's Menaphon,^[2][3][4] and the intransitive "to suffer shipwreck" in 1600.^[2][4] Marlowe used shipwreck as an adjective, "shipwrecked", before 1593.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined the noun as "the destruction of ships by rocks or shelves", quoting Waller.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 1100 – the remains of a wrecked ship, or goods cast up from it.^[4][5]
• 1482 – the loss of a ship at sea.^[2] Etymonline dates this sense to the mid-15th century.^[4]
• 1526 – figuratively, ruin, in to make shipwreck, in Tyndale's Bible.^[2]
• 1550 – the wreckage or cargo of a wrecked ship.^[2]
• 1561 – verb, to bring to ruin.^[2]
• 1589 – verb, to cause someone to suffer shipwreck.^[2][3]
• before 1593 – adjective, shipwrecked, in Marlowe's Edward II.^[2]
• 1600 – verb, intransitive, to suffer shipwreck; to fail completely.^[2][4]
• 1609 – verb, to wreck a vessel.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The loss or destruction of a ship at sea, by sinking, a storm or running onto rocks.^[3][2][8]
2. A wrecked ship, or its remains; wreckage: Divers explored the shipwreck off the headland.^[3][2]
3. Complete ruin or failure: The talks ended in shipwreck.^[3][2]

Verb

1. To cause a person to suffer shipwreck, usually in the passive: The crew were shipwrecked on a reef.^[3][2]
2. To ruin or destroy: The scandal shipwrecked her career.^[3][2]
3. To wreck a ship or other vessel.^[2]
4. To suffer shipwreck, or figuratively to fail completely.^[2][4]

Related words

• ship
• wreck
• wrack

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
8. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.