What does "-ship" mean?

Appended to a noun to form a new noun denoting a property or state of being, time spent in a role, or a specialised union. In particular, the way a set of social duties associated with a particular role shapes or develop's one's character.

What is a synonym for "-ship"?

Common synonyms include: dom, hood, itude, ity, ness, th.

-ship

//ʃɪp// suffix

suffix ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Suffix

1
Appended to a noun to form a new noun denoting a property or state of being, time spent in a role, or a specialised union. In particular, the way a set of social duties associated with a particular role shapes or develop's one's character. morpheme
"fellow → fellowship"

Synonyms

All synonyms

dom hood itude ity ness th

Etymology

From Middle English -schipe, -shippe, from Old English -sċiepe, from Proto-West Germanic *-skapi, from Proto-Germanic *-skapiz. Compare Scots -schip, West Frisian -skip, Dutch -schap, German -schaft, Swedish -skap, Icelandic -skapur. Related to shape.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.