Cargos

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A plural form denoting goods or items transported by a vehicle or vessel
2. Describing substantial loads carried as freight by ships, trucks, or planes
3. Referring to the collective contents being shipped across various modes of transport

Etymology: "Cargos" is the plural of "cargo," which is borrowed from Spanish "cargo," meaning "load" or "burden." The Spanish word comes from "cargar," "to load," itself descended from Late Latin "carricō," a term tied to loading a vehicle. English and Spanish share the root, so the two languages' words for loads are close kin. The word is a doublet of "charge" and "carga," meaning that all three trace back to the same ancestor but reached their present forms by different routes. "Charge" came into English through French, while "carga" stayed in Spanish, so the same idea of a load has split into words with quite different senses in each language. English once had its own word for a ship's load, "fearm," but Spanish-derived "cargo" displaced it.

Synonyms: freights, shipments, loads, consignments