Wiktionary
n. (context nautical English) a narrow-beam passenger ship designed for high speed trans-oceanic travel
WordNet
n. a large commercial ship (especially one that carries passengers on a regular schedule) [syn: liner]
Wikipedia
An ocean liner is a ship designed to transport people from one seaport to another along regular long-distance maritime routes according to a schedule. Liners may also carry cargo or mail, and may sometimes be used for other purposes (e.g., for pleasure cruises or as hospital ships).
Cargo vessels running to a schedule are sometimes called liners. The category does not include ferries or other vessels engaged in short-sea trading, nor dedicated cruise ships where the voyage itself, and not transportation, is the prime purpose of the trip. Nor does it include tramp steamers, even those equipped to handle limited numbers of passengers. Some shipping companies refer to themselves as "lines" and their container ships, which often operate over set routes according to established schedules, as "liners".
Ocean liners are usually strongly built with a high freeboard to withstand rough seas and adverse conditions encountered in the open ocean. Additionally, they are often designed with thicker hull plating than is found on cruise ships, and have large capacities for fuel, food and other consumables on long voyages.
Once the dominant form of travel between continents, ocean liners were rendered largely obsolete by the emergence of long-distance aircraft after World War II. As of 2015, was the only ship still in service as an ocean liner.
Usage examples of "ocean liner".
When he was young, he wrote about a voyage he took on the largest ocean liner of her time, the Great Eastern.
Why spend millions reconverting a nine-hundred-and-ninety-foot ocean liner into a bomb carrier when he could have used any one of a thousand old obsolete ships?
I should have known better than to suggest that the man who single-handedly sank the most beautiful ocean liner in the world was losing his taste for blood sport.
But then he figured, what the hell, he'd just stepped off what was once the most prestigious ocean liner in the world.
I've always found it interesting that two weeks after a ship sinks, any ship, be it a tugboat or an ocean liner, there is a rumor that it was carrying $10,000 in cash somewhere in its bowels.
The balcony was high above the rocks, and the surf crashed and sucked back and forth below them so that it seemed they stood on the prow of an ocean liner.
Their fear gradually altered to growing determination to expose what their imaginations suggested were dead souls haunting the decaying ocean liner.
Who but a madman would claim to have flown through the skies faster than the fastest ocean liner?