gharry

English

A horsedrawn gharry in Kolkata, circa 1903

Etymology

(deprecated template usage) [etyl] Hindi गाड़ी gāṛi: a wheeled cart, carriage; a car, truck, bus. From the Old Indo-Aryan gāḍḍa- through the Prakrit gaḍḍi-

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /ˈɡæɹi/

Noun

gharry (plural gharries)

1. A wheeled cart or carriage (usually horsedrawn), used especially in Myanmar.
   • 1934, George Orwell, chapter 10, in Burmese Days‎^[1]:

     He thought of Rosa McFee, the Eurasian girl he had seduced in Mandalay in 1913. The way he used to sneak down to the house in a gharry with the shutters down […]

   • 1952, Norman Lewis, Golden Earth:

     There were ranks of gharries that appeared to do no serious business, although occasionally a group of Shans would wake up a driver, bundle into one and go for a quick spin round the bazaar, much as in the old days one took a five shilling flip around the aerodrome in a plane.

   • 1977, Pablo Neruda, Memoirs, translated by Hardie St. Martin, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Chapter 4, p. 86,

     My British friends saw me in a gharry, a little horse-drawn cab used mainly for ephemeral trysts in transit, and offered me the kindly advice that a consul should never use these vehicles for any purpose.

2. (South Africa, military, slang) A jeep or small truck for conveying troops.