Load

How to spell load

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce load

What does load mean?

1. nounA quantity of something that is carried, supported, or transported at one time.
2. verbTo place a quantity of something onto a vehicle, container, or device, or to transfer data or software into a system.

Load in a sentence

• noun

  The truck carried a heavy load of gravel up the hill.

• verb

  The warehouse staff began to load the boxes onto the lorry at dawn.

• noun

  She put a load of washing into the machine before work.

• verb

  Please wait for the page to load before clicking the button.

Where does load come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Load comes from the Old English word lad, which meant a way, a course, or a journey, and was closely related to the verb that became modern 'lead'. For centuries its core idea was carrying or conveyance rather than weight, since a journey was how goods were moved from place to place. The familiar modern sense of a burden or a quantity carried grew up gradually during the Middle Ages, helped along by confusion with the separate verb 'lade' (to put cargo aboard), which survives today in 'laden' and 'bill of lading'. By the 1500s 'load' had firmly taken on its weight-and-cargo meaning, and the older 'journey' sense faded away. The same ancient root also gave us 'lode', the vein of metal ore that miners follow, which is why 'load' and 'lode' sound identical but are spelled differently and mean entirely different things.

How the word is built

• load (from Old English lād: way, course, carrying); single root, no affixes