merchant ship
"merchant-ship" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“merchant ship” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A ship that is principally or (usually) entirely civilian, engaged in trade, which carries cargo, passengers, or both.
Corpus desk
Index EN-merchant-ship · merchant ship · English
merchant ship · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 13 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "M" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | merchant ship |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “merchant ship” in English
Rare enough to double-check
merchant ship is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A ship that is principally or (usually) entirely civilian, engaged in trade, which carries cargo, passengers, or both.".
Zero misspellings are on record for merchant ship in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is merchant ship, spelled M-E-R-C-H-A-N-T- -S-H-I-P.
Definition
- 1A ship that is principally or (usually) entirely civilian, engaged in trade, which carries cargo, passengers, or both.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how merchant ship appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Old pirates, yes, they rob I Sold I to the merchant ships Minutes after they took I From the bottomless pit.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.