In Genesis 6 Yahweh tells Noah “Make a box of gopher wood. You shall make rooms in the box, and shall seal it inside and outside with pitch. This is how you shall make it. The length of the box shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. You shall make a roof in the box, and you shall finish it to a cubit upward. You shall set the door of the box in its side. You shall make it with lower, second, and third levels.”

The Hebrew word God used for the box was תֵּבָה (tēvah). It meant a box, a chest, or even a coffin.
In the Bible, it is only used for Noah’s tevah, and Moshe’s tevah, (the box that Moshe was put into when he was floated down the river to Pharoah’s daughter).
Outside of the Bible, it was just an ordinary everyday word for some kind of box, usually with a lid. And had no connotation or implied connection at all with water.

The Septuagint Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament used the word κιβωτός (kibōtós) in these two places. In Greek it means “box”. It does not mean “ship”.

In Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, (in the 300’s), he used the Latin word arca. Which also means a box or chest. It does not mean, or imply, “ship”.

Then early English translations, Wycliffe, Tyndale, used the Middle English word “arke” which at that time also meant the same thing, “a box or chest”, not “a boat”.
So when the King James Version was done in 1611, it followed all these and used the word “ark”. (Which we no longer use in modern English).

To add to confusion, the King James also used “ark” for the box of the covenant, which is housed in the inner chamber of the temple, and which contained the stone tablets of the law of Moshe.
But in the original Hebrew, it did not use tevah for this box. It was called אָרוֹן (‘aron), which specifically means “a chest”.
And the same word was used for Joseph’s coffin, and for the box used to receive the offerings in 2 Kings 12.
But in 1611 English you could quite rightly call them both “an ark”.

So, if the Genesis 6 you read, had been translated using the word “box” - what would you be looking for in Turkey? A pointy ended boat shape?
And if you had read in Exodus 2 that his mother had floated Moshe on the river in a papyrus box, (also coated with tar and pitch, by the way) - how would that have changed your idea of what Noah’s tevah looked like?

So, is this important? Or am I just being pedantic about words which don’t matter?
I would argue that they are important. And that’s why God chose to use different words in different places.
Not just so we would have a better understanding of Noah’s and Moshe’s boxes, …
It also changes all the connotations a modern reader would add to the story.
When we think of a boat, we think of navigation, we think of how it will float on seas with big waves.
We think of Noah sailing it, steering it. But if it’s just a massive box floating on flood waters…

And why did God choose this word tevah for these two boxes?
How are they related?

How is Moshe floating “helplessly” as a baby down a river to Pharaoh’s daughter, parallel Noah and his family floating “helplessly” in a box full of animals?
How did Moshe deliver his nation vs how did Noah deliver the human race?
Where would we all be now if it wasn’t for these two boxes?

Where would you be?