Slang & Culture
Ship (as a verb)
To release a product or feature to users. 'Ship it' means 'put it live'. AI culture prizes shipping fast — 'ship early, ship often' — and critics use the same word to complain that half-tested AI features are shipped to the public.
Origin · no single documented coiner
Software-industry slang since at least the 1990s, from the metaphor of sending a physical product out the door. Steve Jobs's line 'Real artists ship' (1983, to the Macintosh team) is the most famous early usage. No single coiner for the general habit.
No single primary source link for this term.