car

英文词源

car

car: [14] Car seems first to have been used as an independent term for a road vehicle powered by an internal-combustion engine in 1896, in the publication Farman’s Auto-Cars (the compounds autocar and motorcar are a year earlier). But the word is of course of far longer standing as a general term for a wheeled conveyance. It comes ultimately from an unrecorded Celtic *karros, via Latin carrus ‘two-wheeled wagon’, Vulgar Latin *carra, and Anglo-Norman carre or car; it is probably linked with current and course, giving an underlying meaning ‘move swiftly’.

English words derived at some point or other from the same source include career, carriage, carry, charge, and chariot.
=> career, caricature, carriage, carry, charge, chariot, course, current

car (n.)

c. 1300, "wheeled vehicle," from Anglo-French carre, Old North French carre, from Vulgar Latin *carra, related to Latin carrum, carrus (plural carra), originally "two-wheeled Celtic war chariot," from Gaulish karros, a Celtic word (compare Old Irish and Welsh carr "cart, wagon," Breton karr "chariot"), from PIE *krsos, from root *kers- "to run" (see current (adj.)).

"From 16th to 19th c. chiefly poetic, with associations of dignity, solemnity, or splendour ..." [OED]. Used in U.S. by 1826 of railway freight carriages and of passenger coaches on a railway by 1830; by 1862 of a streetcar or tramway car. Extension to "automobile" is by 1896, but from 1831 to the first decade of 20c. the cars meant "railroad train." Car bomb first 1972, in reference to Northern Ireland. The Latin word also is the source of Italian and Spanish carro, French char.