Home › Words › S › shipfulshipfulshipful means as much as a ship will hold.Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, shipful ranks #9,840 of 42,747 for Qualifying.EtymologyFrom Middle English shipfull, schyp fful, ssipvol, equivalent to ship + -ful.nounAs much as a ship will hold.e.g.“And in Elinor Gordon’s booth you’ll find a shipful of China Trade porcelains, of a kind that gave the West an image of China that the Chinese thought the West wanted to see.” — 2007 January 19, Holland Cotter, “Treasure Hunt for Grown-Ups With Money”, in New York Times:Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).