Dictionary

wagonette en · NOUN

Etymology

From wagon + -ette.

Meanings

1. A kind of four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage, normally uncovered.
   • In my day-dreams, I could easily visualise myself (wearing a regulation bowler hat, no doubt) next to an equally bowler-hatted Dr Watson, sucking on a pipe and looking at the civilised and well-cultivated pastoral, unveiling behind the window. "The train pulled up at a small wayside station, and we all descended. Outside, beyond the low, white fence, a wagonette with a pair of cobs was waiting. Our coming was evidently a great event, for station master and porters clustered round us to carry out our luggage." At this point, I had to descend - from my cloud-cuckoo-land, to look up the word 'cob' in my dog-eared English-Russian Dictionary, published in Moscow in 1948. According to that, the word's only meaning was 'male swan'. Hmm... a wagonette, drawn by swans. 2026 April 1, Vitali Vitaliev, “Literature on the track”, in RAIL, number 1058, page 68:
   • On glowing summer afternoons wagonettes came full of Americans and cultured suburbans to see the sepulchre 1911, G. K. Chesterton, “The Sign of the Broken Sword”, in The Innocence of Father Brown:
   • The cabs here are mostly covered waggonettes, with one horse. They hold four people; the sides have coloured glass, and behind the driver there is a window which is drawn aside when you communicate with him. 1901 July 19, “To Australia and Back”, in The Agricultural Journal and Mining Record, volume 4, number 10, page 298:
   • He was a peasant worker from Tienchen County, and had been working on the dam, carrying earth and stone or pushing wagonettes here for half a year. 1954, People's China, numbers 1-12, Peking: Foreign Languages Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 31, column 1:
   • The departure was not unduly prolonged.[…]Within the door Mrs. Spoker hastily imparted to Mrs. Love a few final sentiments on the subject of Divine Intention in the disposition of buckets; farewells and last commiserations; a deep, guttural instigation to the horse; and the wheels of the waggonette crunched heavily away into obscurity. 1921, Ben Travers, chapter 5, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC:

Forms

Translations (2)

ga vaigínéad (a kind of carriage) · pt vagoneta (a kind of carriage)