Mid 17th century: from Spanish cargo, carga, from late Latin carricare, carcare 'to load', from Latin carrus 'wheeled vehicle'.

• car from Late Middle English:

  The earliest recorded uses of car, dating probably from the 14th century, referred to wheeled vehicles such as carts or wagons. The word came into English from Old French carre, based on Latin carrus ‘two-wheeled vehicle’, the source of words such as career, cargo (mid 17th century), carriage (Late Middle English), carry (Late Middle English), charge (Middle English), and chariot (Late Middle English). From the 16th to the 19th centuries car was mainly used in poetic or literary contexts to suggest a sense of splendour and solemnity. Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) used it to describe the funeral carriage bearing the body of the Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) at his state funeral: ‘And a reverent people behold / The towering car, the sable steeds’ (‘Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington’, 1852). The first self-propelled road vehicle was a steam-driven carriage designed and built in France in 1769, but such vehicles were not called cars until the 1890s.