Carfuls

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The number of loads that completely fill a standard automobile ; the quantity of something that can be carried in a single vehicle designed for personal transport
2. Amounts large enough to fill passenger cars entirely ; totals representing each separate load able to be transported by a single automotive vehicle
3. Several instances of a full vehicle’s carrying capacity ; the measures indicating how much fits into an individually loaded car for transport

Etymology: "Carfuls" is the plural of "carful," a noun meaning as much as a car can hold. The second half is the familiar suffix "-ful," which is also found in "handful" and "spoonful," so the word is a simple combination of "car" and "-ful." Its older form, Middle English "carful," meant "cartful," and that is the clue to its history: the word was built on "cart," not on the modern automobile. The meaning of "car" has shifted considerably. In Middle English, "car" referred to a wheeled vehicle, a cart or chariot, and it was the same root that gave the word its older sense. Only much later did "car" come to mean the motor vehicle we know today, so the word "carful" has carried its original sense of a cartload while the main word around it changed. Related forms in West Frisian, Saterland Frisian and German, such as "karfol" and "Karrevoll," share the same meaning of a cartful, showing that the idea of a load carried by a wagon is a shared old sense across these languages.