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Oxford Dictionary recognises Sherlock

A word used in Sherlock is now officially in the Oxford Dictionary.

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sherlock_19Sherlock stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Louise Brealey have made it into the dictionary.

Brealey, who plays Molly in the UK drama, and Cumberbatch’s Sherlock are being used by Oxford Dictionaries Online as an example to define a new word for falling in love: ship.

Oxford Dictionaries explains: “Ship was originally an abbreviation of relationship, and refers to a romantic relationship between two characters in a fictional series – often one that is supported by fans rather than depicted in the series itself.

“Those who have a particular interest in a particular ship are known as shippers, which is another word entering Oxford Dictionaries Online in this update. Support for one of these relationships is described by the verb ship – for example, ‘I will always ship Sherlock and Molly’.”

Now wondering when we will get new titles….
When Ship Comes to Town.
Ship, Actually
Crazy, Stupid, Ship

PS. I Ship You

Source: RadioTimes

15 Responses

  1. Again I’m not sure you’ll read this agent x. I’ve read about the Star Trek fans creating the term slash from Kirk/Spock too. Or from the slash in between them. Which lead to others adopting it too. Including for The X-Files. Among so much more. Plus the retrospective stuff.

    I leave others to the grammar argument. That said, they might have trouble with the non-PG examples. So perhaps that limits them.

  2. Hey A. Yep I know Star Trek fans created fanzines and wrote fanfics long before the internet was around. I think they coined the term “slash” literally from the” /” in “Spock/Kirk” fic.

    I’m just having a look at the Oxford Dictionary and I have to say some of their examples of the use of “ship” are a bit dodgy, grammatically speaking.

    For example:
    “I like to read about ships between fictional characters”.
    “Their dedication to their ships is scary sometimes”.
    “I ship for Harry/Hermione because, well, they’re always dropping hints”.

    For a dictionary these are very clunky uses of the term ship.

  3. I don’t know if you’ll read this agent x but as far as I know I think Star Trek might have invented slash. At least the term slash. Because of Kirk/Spock. Plus other variations. However that doesn’t mean people might not have wanted two characters to be together even if it wasn’t authorised. It just wasn’t known as slash or ‘shipping. Plus the internet helped link people together.

    Because before that there were fanzines. Which made it harder to put together and communicate. If people put things in a book then it probably had to be general audience because of censorship. Think of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and that being banned for a long time. So overt stuff was basically forbidden.

    The sixties started to free that up. But they still censored Doctor Who back then and kept the clips even though they chucked out the episodes. Which shows what a screwed up priority people had…

  5. By the way I remember as a child watching Dave Allen probably in the early eighties and there was a sketch involving them. I think one of them, probably Watson, got fatally or gravely injured with a spear or something and so he and Holmes declared their undying love for one another. So even comedians were coming up with Holmes/Watson jokes. This definitely was before The X-Files was even thought up.

    P.S. I loved The X-Files although I wasn’t a ‘shipper. I did think it lost the plot at the end however.

  6. I’ll admit I’ve read online that people used to ‘ship Holmes/Watson (i.e. Conan Doyle books not modern era) way back when in the twentieth century. So ironically if true it may not be a wrong idea that they started it. Also because homosexuality was illegal sometimes they supposedly made one of them a woman. I haven’t read the stories but there are plenty of people writing fiction based on the Conan Doyle stories.

    Although I’ll note these things are a small subset of fandom. Most Sherlock Holmes fiction would be for the general audience not this type of thing. Also I have no first hand knowledge of the history of it. That said even in the modern day they sometimes make one of them a woman. They’ve done it more than once on television e.g. Elementary.

  7. As an XFiles fan and proud Mulder/Scully shipper for almost 20 years!!!!!!!!! I’m slightly miffed that the dictionary have chosen Sherlock/Molly as an example.
    Next they’ll be saying Sherlock/John fans invented slash.

  8. @A.
    I’ve seen the term used in regards to wishful existing fictional relationships and extended to existing fictional relationships on a Neighbours forum for at least the past ten years.

  9. Hi David, you’ve slightly misunderstood the definition. It is not a synonym for “love”. It is the desire by fans for two fictional characters to be in a relation’ship’ (with implicit acknowledgement that those characters are not so). So if you say “I ship you” – you’re saying I wish we were in a fictional relationship.

  10. I like that they credit Sherlock but I agree it has been around for years. There’s Star Trek: The Original Series where the fans had various characters in relationships. It got mentioned in the first film novelisation. Although I remember it being used by the Buffy fandom. Notably there were Buffy/Angel ‘shippers and the Buffy/Spike ones too that liked to argue online with each other. But there were many, many more. Believe me.

    I wonder will they include “slash” too i.e. often same sex or opposite orientation ‘shippers and ‘shipping. For example Sherlock/John. Although there are other ones that I’m not going to mention.

  12. “When Ship Comes to Town.
    Ship, Actually
    Crazy, Stupid, Ship”

    Change the ‘p’ to a ‘t’ and you’ve got three descriptions of Ten’s daytime schedule for the next week.

  14. Well I learnt something today. I had no idea that word even existed.
    And surely if anyone was going to be “shipped” in Sherlock, it would be him and Moriati, like in that beautiful moment in Season 3 😉

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