Q-ship

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A merchant ship with concealed weaponry, designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks. historical

    "Q-ships were usually armed with one 4-inch and two 12-pounder guns. These were hidden behind hinged bulwarks, inside false superstructures and false deck cargoes, or under dummy lifeboats."

Synonyms

All synonyms
q-boat

Example

More examples

"Q-ships were usually armed with one 4-inch and two 12-pounder guns. These were hidden behind hinged bulwarks, inside false superstructures and false deck cargoes, or under dummy lifeboats."

Etymology

Short for Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland, the home port of the British Q-ships, when they were first implemented in World War I.

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