Car

How to spell car

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce car

What does car mean?

1. nounA road vehicle, usually with four wheels, powered by an engine or motor and used to carry a small number of people.
2. nounA separate section or carriage of a train, especially in North American usage.

Car in a sentence

• She parked the car outside the office before her meeting.

• The dining car on the train served breakfast until ten.

• The family loaded their luggage into the car for the long drive north.

• Passengers moved to the rear car as the platform filled.

Where does car come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin carrus, meaning a four-wheeled wagon or cart, which the Romans in turn borrowed from a Gaulish (Celtic) word for a wheeled vehicle. It passed into Norman French as carre and entered English around the 1300s, where for centuries it simply meant any cart, chariot, or carriage. When railways arrived in the nineteenth century, 'car' became the natural term for a railway carriage, and by the close of that century it was attached to the new self-propelled 'motor car'. The clipped form 'car' then swallowed up 'automobile' in everyday speech, especially in Britain. The same carrus root also gave English 'cargo', 'carry', 'chariot', and 'career', so a surprising family of words traces back to one ancient wagon.

How the word is built

• car (from Latin carrus, a wheeled vehicle; a single unanalysable root in English)