Shipper
noun, slang ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A seaman; mariner; skipper. archaic
- 2 A person who supports a romantic or sexual relationship between fictional characters or real people. slang
"For creative fans and committed 'shippers^([sic]), fanfiction continues the interaction — the dialogue, the conversation, the story […]"
- 3 a company in the business of shipping freight wordnet
- 4 The person or organization that ships (sends) something.
"The shipper should have paid for insurance on the package, because it was damaged when it arrived."
- 5 someone who ships goods wordnet
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- 6 A box for shipping something fragile, such as bottled beer or wine.
Example
More examples"The shipper should have paid for insurance on the package, because it was damaged when it arrived."
Etymology
Either formed anew from ship + -er or borrowed from Middle Low German schipper; compare skipper and Old English sċipere (“sailor”). Piecewise doublet of skipper (“captain, sailor”).
From a clipping of relationshipper. Relationshipper emerged in early online fandom of the television series The X-Files as a term for fans who supported the possibility of a Mulder/Scully romance. It was shortened to r'shipper, then 'shipper, and finally shipper. By surface analysis, ship (“to create a fictional romantic relationship”) + -er.
Related phrases
More for "shipper"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.