supertanker
Pluralsupertankers
- 1An extremely large tanker ship, built to transport huge volumes of oil or other liquids over long ocean voyages.
A loaded supertanker needs several miles of open water to come to a complete stop.
The crew aboard the supertanker spent weeks at sea hauling crude oil between continents.
Note
The word simply joins super- to tanker, but the ship's sheer bulk has made it a figure for anything slow to change direction. Sir Michael Holden, writing in RAIL in 2024, compares reform to 'trying to turn a super tanker round 180 degrees': it cannot be done quickly. In that figurative use the verb is usually turn. The closed spelling supertanker is standard, though the open super tanker also turns up.
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Origin
Formed from the prefix "super-" combined with "tanker."