It's time to add internet slang 'ship' to the dictionary

I came of age online. LiveJournal and Tumblr were fixtures for me in the early 2010s, when Harry Potter fan-fiction was written at warp speed and Tumblr had not yet banned adult content.

In those days, one could not go far without running into the internet slang term “ship.” Ship, a term so ubiquitous in fandom it has its own Wikipedia page, was immortalized on Urban Dictionary in 2003, in noun and verb form. Noun, short for relationship. Verb, to endorse a romantic relationship.

While the concept of wanting two fictional characters to have sex/fall in love predates “ship,” the term reportedly first entered the online forum sphere in the 1990s with The X-Files. Fans who wanted to see Mulder and Scully together were known as “relationshippers,” which was truncated to just “R’shippers,” and finally just “shippers.”

Over the years — as the gap between online life and “real life” blurred more and more into nothing — “ship” crossed over from a fandom term about fictional characters to include actual people. “There’s a genre of fan-fiction called RPF, or real-person fiction. It is fiction that people write about ‘real-life’ people,” said Gretchen McCulloch, internet linguist and author of Because Internet. RPF is generally about celebrities; an example McCulloch used was Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, Canadian ice dancers that fans speculated were dating.

Going from shipping characters to celebrities is a smooth-enough transition. Famous people, even in the age of social media, are perceived as unattainable beings, fictional personas that non-celebrities can freely form opinions about. Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir should have been together; Justin Bieber was better with Selena Gomez than Hailey Bieber née Baldwin; and so on.

But as millennials and Gen Z — who grew up online with “ship” in their lexicon — came of age, the phrase has gotten a new permutation. It’s now used simply when speaking about friends and people you actually know.

“We say it like, ‘I ship you and Sam,’ kinda like ‘you would look good with Sam’ … it’s really just a before-relationship thing,” said 14-year-old Zofia.

Bri, a 17-year-old, told me that she and her friends use it “almost-exclusively” ironically — but when they do, it’s about “IRL” relationships.

The term is so pervasive that there’s even a dating app named Ship now. “I first heard [the term] interspersed here and there, really a lot on social media in reference to celebrity couples,” said Jordana Abraham, founder of Betches Media, co-host of the dating podcast U Up?, and cofounder of the app. “I've seen it pop up and gain popularity over the past few years, mostly online via social media — but recently, more in-person.”

Despite the ubiquitous use of “ship” online, however, the non-sea vessel definition is nowhere in sight in the dictionary.

That is, in my opinion, a massive oversight — but it may soon change.

The team at Ship announced on Wednesday that they’re requesting the Oxford English Dictionary to add the new definition of the word “ship.” (The definition does appear on Lexico, a collaboration between Oxford University Press and Dictionary.com, but it does not appear in the OED). The campaign is called Update This Ship, and the aim is to give ship the same treatment as terms “catfish” and “troll,” which have been entered into OED.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

In England, Ship is taking out a full-page ad in the Oxford Times directed at the dictionary’s editors. In New York City, a mobile billboard will be parked outside Oxford’s outpost. In addition, Ship is asking for 10,000 signatures for a petition to present to the committee.

Some may see this as a marketing ploy for the app. I’d argue that even if that is the case, the campaign is right: The definition of “ship” should be added to the Oxford English Dictionary. I have some skin in this game myself. Last year, “orbiting” — a term I coined to describe a one-time dating prospect ghosting via text but continuing to review one’s Instagram/Snapchat story — was shortlisted as Oxford’s 2018 Word of the Year.

The internet brought us the term “ship,” and it has also changed the dating scene worldwide. As such, it makes sense that the English language evolves to keep up with these changes.

Ship functions the same way as many verbs. As McCulloch explained, “to ship” needs a third party, much like the verb “to introduce.” For example, your friend may introduce you to her classmate, just as your friend may ship you with that classmate. To get a bit more meta, there is always a third party involved when using “ship” — even if you ship yourself with another person (or ship yourself with yourself, the ultimate self-love ship!).

This third party aspect is actually critical to the functionality of Ship. Just as “shipping” requires three parties, so does the app. Friends swipe on each other’s behalf — or if someone is in a relationship, they can swipe on behalf of their single friend. “Given all the dating content that we [Betches] make, we felt like there was a real need for this kind of app,” Abraham said. “People may feel less isolated and more social and the app could bring down this high stakes feeling of dating online.”

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Abraham and her team wanted their dating app to more imitate what people were already doing: swiping for their friends and talking about matches and potential dates. “People are already screenshotting pictures of people they were seeing on apps and sending them to their friends,” she said. “So we created a group chat which just really made the whole concept easier and made the whole dating process more fun.”

Abraham added, “As we observe millennial dating, something that's so important to people is having their friends involved in their [dating] lives.”

The online space has changed entirely even in the 16 years since “ship” was first defined on Urban Dictionary, and it will continue to. We should acknowledge its significance by adding it to the actual dictionary (no defense to Urban Dictionary or Lexico). It’s time that ship, a verb with an almost 30-year history, is legitimized.

In other words, I ship “ship” and the Oxford English Dictionary.