wagonette

English

Alternative forms

• waggonette

Etymology

From wagon +‎ -ette.

Noun

wagonette (plural wagonettes)

1. A kind of four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage, normally uncovered.
   • 1901 July 19, “To Australia and Back”, in The Agricultural Journal and Mining Record‎^[1], volume 4, number 10, page 298:

     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.

   • 1911, G. K. Chesterton, “The Sign of the Broken Sword”, in The Innocence of Father Brown:

     On glowing summer afternoons wagonettes came full of Americans and cultured suburbans to see the sepulchre

   • 1922, Ben Travers, chapter 5, in A Cuckoo in the Nest:

     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.

   • 1954, People's China‎^[2], numbers 1-12, Peking: Foreign Languages Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 31, column 1:

     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.

Translations

a kind of carriage

• Irish: vaigínéad m

Further reading

• “wagonette”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.