Stowage is the room you have on a ship, plane, truck or car for putting things away — the space itself, not the things. A captain talks about the stowage in the hold; a boat magazine will say a small yacht has 'plenty of stowage under the seats'. The word is old and a bit technical. Ordinary people today say storage space or just space; stowage still lives on in sailing, shipping and aviation, and you will meet it in boat advertisements and in writing about the sea. Though actually the word does two more jobs, and the same spelling covers all three. It can mean the act of packing things away and packing them well — 'careful stowage of the cargo' means someone loaded it properly so it will not slide about. And in shipping it can mean the money paid for that space. So when you meet it, ask yourself: the room, the loading, or the fee? Most of the time it is the room. One more thing worth noticing: stowage suggests packing things in tightly and out of sight — under a seat, below a deck, inside a locker. That is different from storage, which can be a whole warehouse standing in a field. Stowage is small, clever, tucked-away space.

（船、飛機、車上的）收納空間、置物空間；貨物的裝載、堆放。台灣講船或遊艇時多半直接說「收納空間」，不會有一個常用的專門譯法；若在航運文件裡，「裝載」「堆裝」比較貼近原意。