Freight transport

Freight transport is the physical process of transporting commodities and merchandise goods and cargo. The term shipping originally referred to transport by sea, but is extended in American English to refer to transport by land or air (International English: "carriage") as well. "Logistics", a term borrowed from the military environment, is also fashionably used in the same sense.

Modes of shipment

Ground

Land or "ground" shipping can be by train or by truck (International English: lorry). In air and sea shipments, ground transport is required to take the cargo from its place of origin to the airport or seaport and then to its destination because it is not always possible to establish a production facility near ports due to limited coastlines of countries. Ground transport is typically more affordable than air, but more expensive than sea especially in developing countries like India, where inland infrastructure is not efficient.

Shipment of cargo by trucks, directly from the shipper's place to the destination, is known as a door to door shipment and more formally as multimodal transport. Trucks and trains make deliveries to sea and air ports where cargo is moved in bulk.

Shipping (fandom)

Shipping, initially derived from the word relationship, is the desire by fans for two or more people, either real-life people or fictional characters, to be in a relationship, romantic or otherwise. It is considered a general term for fans' emotional involvement with the ongoing development of a relationship in a work of fiction. Shipping often takes the form of creative works, including fanfiction and fan art, most often published on the internet.

A ship that has been confirmed by its series and is true is called a canon ship. It is highly unlikely that the ship will sink, because it has already been acknowledged to be true. Canon is indeed a word as used in this context according to the Merriam-Webster 2014 school dictionary.

Shipping can involve virtually any kind of relationship from the well-known and established, to the ambiguous or those undergoing development, and even to the highly improbable or blatantly impossible. Though "shipping" usually refers to romantic relationships, it can also refer to simple friendships; this subset is sometimes known as "friendshipping", or a "BrOTP" (a portmanteau of the terms bromance and one true pairing). Shipping in fanfiction between a same-sex couple is also known as slash fiction, an older term and concept that dates to the late 1970s.

Shipping (disambiguation)

Shipping may refer to:

See also