MEANING
1. An accident in which a ship is destroyed or sunk, often leaving people stranded.
2. A ship left ruined, stranded, or sunk after being destroyed or badly damaged.
3. To destroy or badly damage a plan, relationship, reputation, or other undertaking.
Use it for
describing a vessel lost at sea; portraying survivors stranded after maritime disaster; distinguishing a ship’s destruction from an ordinary road crashPrecisely names a maritime disaster and its surviving vessel, including the stranded aftermath for people. Writing functions: Ruin / Desolation.
Words that belong together
- survive a shipwreck
- the danger of shipwreck
- be shipwrecked on an island
On the page
She survived the shipwreck with no proof that her brother had been aboard.
The crew were shipwrecked on a shore absent from their charts.
At low water the shipwreck looked less like a vessel than a row of broken ribs.
A bell hung inside the shipwreck, tilted beneath its coat of weed.
His refusal to explain the missing money shipwrecked the reconciliation.
Word forms
- Base
- shipwreck
- Past tense
- shipwrecked
- Past participle
- shipwrecked
- Present participle
- shipwrecking
Usage notes
Noun: a shipwreck, shipwrecks; uncountable in danger of shipwreck. Verb: shipwreck, shipwrecks, shipwrecked, shipwrecked, shipwrecking; often passive of survivors. One compound Word, not separate words ship and wreck. Register: neutral. Commonness: moderately common (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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