On 19-May-09, at 12:43 PM, Assembly for the Teaching of English  
Grammar wrote:

> When I order books from amazon.com or amazon.co.uk, I sometimes  
> receive
> messages saying:
>
> your order has shipped/has dispatched

Amazon.ca uses only shipped, not dispatched.

The OED has ship in a similar, but somewhat different sense from  
1867: "It ships well, and is a very good peach."

In the first 100 hits for HAVE + SHIP in the Corpus of Current  
American English, the only relevant examples I see are:
-Popular Mechanics (2006) "there's a chance that your PC may have  
shipped with the hardware necessary to connect"
-The Houson Chronicle (2005) "since her debut album in 1990, more  
than 150 million Carey albums have shipped."

So, it does appear to be something of an innovation, and not  
particularly common.

Best,
Brett

-----------------------
Brett Reynolds
English Language Centre
Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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