shipper

English

Either formed anew from ship +‎ -er or borrowed from Middle Low German schipper; compare skipper and Old English sċipere (“sailor”). Piecewise doublet of skipper (“captain, sailor”).

shipper (plural shippers)

(archaic) A seaman; mariner; skipper.
The person or organization that ships (sends) something.
The shipper should have paid for insurance on the package, because it was damaged when it arrived.
A box for shipping something fragile, such as bottled beer or wine.

the person or organization that ships (sends) something

From a clipping of relationshipper. Relationshipper emerged in early online fandom of the television series The X-Files as a term for fans who supported the possibility of a Mulder/Scully romance.^[1]^[2] It was shortened to r'shipper, then 'shipper, and finally shipper.^[2]^[3] By surface analysis, ship (“to create a fictional romantic relationship”) +‎ -er.

shipper (plural shippers)

^ Maggie Owens, "The Sweet Science of Shipping It", Fandom, 29 June 2008
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 Alyse Wax, "How The X-Files helped shape modern fandom — including shipping", Syfy, 20 March 2018. Archived from the original on March 6, 2021.
^ Anna Iovine, "It's time to add internet slang 'ship' to the dictionary", Mashable, 20 November 2019