Long ago, I read an article explaining the mathematical method of establishing whether a word has meaning. (As I remember, meaningful words demonstrate clustering in graphs. “Nail” clusters around “no threads, no notch in head” and “screw” clusters around “threads, notch in head”. “Fnorcal” has no meaning because no identifiers can be found that exhibit clustering.)
The article claimed that naval terms like “battleship”, “destroyer”, etc. turn out to be meaningless: a “battleship” turns out–when assessed by the characteristics of real battleships–to be no more than “a ship called a ‘battleship’”. No other criterion (weight, length, number of guns, weight times number of guns, etc.) caused sufficient clustering to indicate the word had any reference other than that the word was applied to ships called “battleships”.(The “submarine” did have meaning; there is a clustering around “goes underwater”.)
All this was of particular importance in psychiatric terminology, of course: if “schizophrenic” is a diagnostic term with no real meaning, then a “schizophrenic” hospital patient transferred to another hospital is in big trouble.
Incidentally, I’ve tried to find the article for decades—to no avail.
Isn’t the use of “battleship” to mean “a ship armed for battle” sufficient to give the word meaning? It might not be precise enough for use in naval academies, but seems more than precise enough for civilian use. We certainly don’t strap guns to motor boats, fishing boats, cargo ships, ferries or any other other types of boats we see every day.
Is the problem that there’s a cluster of terms like “battleship”, “destroyer”, “cruiser” and “gunboat”, and the lines are fuzzy between them? It’s much like the line between “ship” and “boat”: if there was one word in English meaning both, then the meaning of that one world would be clearer.
A “battleship” is a ship with large guns used to attack other ships or facilities on shore. A destroyer is a ship that’s designed to be fast and maneuverable. In both cases, the name is not a description. They can be different sizes, have different weapons, or different missions. And, of course, each country can decide what type of ship they’ll classify as such.
But using the origins of a word – or of its parts – as definitions is a fool’s game.
*Briefly, the belief that the words making up a term define the term. Just not so.
This is a frankly stupid and ahistorical criteria to apply to terms relate to an object affected by technological changes over time, as “battleship” does. To expect that the same weight, number of guns, etc. will apply to a weapon system that started as wooden sailing ships with smoothbore cannons and evolved into the reconstructed Iowa class is short-sighted and overly-academic. This analysis has all the earmarks of postmodernist language theories, which are somewhat notorious for being disconnected from reality.
“Battleship” is a shortening of a longer phrase: “Line of battle ship.” In the days of wooden men of war, the standard layout of the cannons for all but small gunboats was to have them arrayed along the sides, pointing to port and starboard. The obvious way to maximize the firepower of a group of such ships was to line them up bow-to-stern in a formation called a Line of Battle. A vessel that could be expected to stand in such a line of battle against a similar formation of the heaviest enemy vessels was a line of battle ship. (Note: this is an obvious simplification, glossing over variations such as “crossing the T” and Nelson’s tactics at Trafalgar.)
The technological revolution that was effected by the triple innovations of rifled heavy weapons, iron or steel armor, and steam power completely obsoleted the wooden line of battle ship. The term battleship survived, however, for the the heaviest, most powerful fighting vessels. Even though the general layout that was settled on arrayed the main weapons in turrets general facing fore and aft, the maximum firepower was still delivered by turning those turrets to one flank or the other. As a result, the line of battle persisted into the modern era, even to the last ever engagement between battleships, the Battle of Surigao Strait.
As to clustering of qualities, the person writing that article would have likely found such a cluster if they knew any naval history. Qualities that would apply would include “mounting largest guns,” “most heavily armored,” “largest men of war,” etc. at the time period considered. Thus, although the Yamato class displaced 72,000 tons, carried 18" guns and up to 25.5" of armor, while the Royal Sovereign class only displaced 15,580 tons and carried 13.5" guns and 18" of armor, in 1892 the latter was just as much the most power fighting warship available as the former was in 1944.