Cargo

How to spell cargo

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cargo

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cargo mean?

1. nounGoods carried by a ship, aircraft, or vehicle.

Cargo in a sentence

• The freighter unloaded its cargo at the busy port.

• A damaged container delayed the entire cargo for a week.

Where does cargo come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

Cargo came into English in the early 1600s from Spanish, where cargo meant a load or a burden carried by ship or beast. That Spanish noun grew out of the verb cargar, meaning to load, which in turn descended from the Late Latin carricare, to load onto a cart. At the root sits the Latin carrus, a wheeled wagon, the same word that gave English 'car', 'carriage', 'carry', and 'charge'. The seafaring sense, goods loaded into a vessel, took hold quickly as English trade expanded across the oceans. Because the word keeps its plain Spanish spelling with no silent letters or odd doublings, it is unusually easy to write down correctly.

How the word is built

• cargo (from Spanish/Latin carricare: to load a wagon)