carro

Forms

carro m (plural carros)^[1] Old Spanish texts write carro and carros, with occasional caro.^[2] Asturian has carru.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin carrus (“a Gallic wagon”), and Old Spanish already had the same form carro.^[4][5][1] The same Latin word is Portuguese carro, Galician carro, Asturian carru, Catalan carro, Occitan car, French char, Italian carro and Romanian car.^[6][7][1]

The Latin word is from Gaulish *karros (“wagon”), as the DLE says.^[5] Corominas and the OLD call it Celtic or Gallic.^[4][8] Wiktionary carries the Gaulish word back to Proto-Celtic *karros (“wagon”) and to Proto-Indo-European *ḱr̥sós, a zero-grade form of *ḱers- (“to run”), and treats it as a doublet of currus.^[1] Gómez de Silva likewise traces it to an Indo-European root meaning “to run”, the root of correr.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record in the CDH is in La fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy), where Joseph gives the sons of Israel carts to fetch their goods: e dioles carros para adozir sos averes “and he gave them carts to bring their goods”.^[10] The first hit in a contemporary manuscript is an account of expenses of the 13th century, which pays xxviii soldos por ii carros “28 sueldos for two carts”.^[10] Corominas dates the word 1220–1250.^[4]

Semantic evolution

In the prose of Alfonso X the word already named the cart with a platform for a load, the war chariot, a private carriage, and the constellation of the Great Bear.^[11] Covarrubias in 1611 set the carro apart from the carreta as the larger vehicle, with iron-rimmed wheels, that travelled the whole country, and also recorded the constellation.^[12] Autoridades defined it as a wooden machine on an axle with two wheels drawn by mules or oxen, and noted that in thieves' slang (germanía) it meant “gambling”.^[13][14] The Academy's 1884 dictionary added the load of a cart and the running gear of a coach without its body.^[15]

Today it also names any wheeled frame for carrying things, such as a shopping or luggage trolley, the moving part of a press or typewriter, and the military tank (carro de combate).^[5][16] In most of Latin America carro is the ordinary word for a motor car; the DAMER traces this sense to car, and Puerto Rican Spanish counts it among the adapted anglicisms.^[17][18] Santamaría in 1942 already used it for any vehicle in the Americas, from the tram and the railway wagon to the car.^[19] In Chile it also means a railway carriage.^[17]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – first record in the CDH, in La fazienda de Ultra Mar (13th-century copy).^[10]
• 1211 – the earliest dated text in the Old Spanish Textual Archive.^[20]
• 1220–1250 – Corominas's date of first record.^[4]
• 1272–1275 – Alfonso X's General estoria names the constellation el carro.^[11]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses it as a vehicle for carrying loads, Latin carrus or carrum.^[21]
• 1572 – first record from the Americas, in Cuzco.^[22]
• 1611 – Covarrubias distinguishes carro from carreta.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology “Del lat. carrus”.^[15]
• 1942 – Santamaría records it for trams, railway wagons and cars in the Americas.^[19]

Meanings

Noun

1. A two-wheeled cart with a pole or shafts for the draught animals and a frame with rails or boards to hold the load.^[5][1]
2. Any wheeled vehicle or frame used to carry things, such as a shopping trolley or a luggage cart.^[5][16]
3. A cartload.^[5]
4. The running gear of a carriage without its body.^[5][16]
5. (military) A tank (short for carro de combate).^[5]
6. (colloquial) A great quantity: Me ha caído encima un carro de problemas.^[5]
7. (printing) The bed of a printing press, which runs on the frame of the machine.^[5]
8. (mechanics) A part of some machines that moves sideways, such as the carriage of a typewriter.^[5][16]
9. (Latin America) A car, automobile.^[5][17][1]
10. (Chile) A railway carriage.^[17][1]

Word family

• carrera
• carreta
• carril
• acarrear
• anticarro
• carrero
• carrito
• carretero
• carretera
• descarrilar

Related words

• cargar
• correr
• Latin carrus
• Portuguese carro

Usage notes

El Carro is a popular name of the Great Bear (Big Dipper), recorded from Alfonso X on.^[11][1][13] In Puerto Rico and Argentina pararle a uno el carro means to check someone in what they say or do.^[19]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. carro
3. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. carru
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. carro
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. carro
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. carrus
7. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 2, 593
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. carro
10. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. carro
11. ^ a b c Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. carro
12. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 448
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 198
14. ^ Hidalgo, Juan (1609), Romances de germanía de varios autores, con el vocabulario por la orden del a.b.c. para declaración de sus términos y lengua, Barcelona: Sebastián de Cormellas (ed. Madrid 1779), p. s.v. carro
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 217
16. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. carro
17. ^ a b c d Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. carro
18. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. carro
19. ^ a b c Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 329
20. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. carro
21. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 312
22. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. carro