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Glite Dictionary
sister ship

sister ship

1 4.3
A ship built at the same time to the same design as another
  • noun
  • Specialized
translation icon : hermana
  • You know, my question is on the other sister ship of the Titanic, the RMS Olympic.
  • sister ship of the Titanic
  • sister ship Britannic

You know, my question is on the other sister ship of the Titanic, the RMS Olympic.

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Examples

  • If those men could've looked in their viewing screen... And seen 2, 3 or more sister ships alongside...

    The Crawling Hand (1963)

  • The RMS Mauretania was the sister ship of the more famous Lusitania.

    Blog text (19)

  • So we had a sister ship on the expedition called the "EAS."

    Ghosts of the Abyss (2003)

  • That boat's a sister ship to the Ark!

    Red Dust (1932)

  • Two months later, a sister ship, Viking 2, also landed, this time in a plain called Utopia.

    Academic text (1992)

  • Shannon's Virtue, sister ship to Ashley's Charm, was being loaded today.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • The details of what will be done to Brilliance have not been announced, but when her sister ship Radiance of the Seas went through a similar revitalization, the Seaview Cafe was replaced with another venue.

    Blog text (30)

  • HMS Ark Royal—sister ship to HMS Invincible, since scrapped—has been decommissioned.

    Blog text (20)

  • Disney's Wonder, a 2,400-passenger sister ship to the Magic, arrived in August 1999.

  • The Titanic's launch was set back six weeks because of repairs needed on its sister ship, the Olympic.

Surface Forms

sister ship singular
sister ships plural

Morphology

sister + ship

The sense 'a ship closely related to another (same design or class)' is directly derivable from combining 'sister' (meaning a female sibling or metaphorically a closely related counterpart) with 'ship' (a vessel). The compound follows a common 'sister + X' pattern used to denote paired or similar items (e.g., sister city, sister company), so an average B1 learner who knows both words should infer the intended meaning.

Etymology

The term sister ship comes from the idea of a family: two or more ships built from the same plan are like 'sisters' with matching features. So a sister ship means another ship with the same design and abilities.