• Cargo

    Pronunciation

    • Rhymes: -ɑː(r)ɡəʊ

    Origin

    From Spanish cargo ("load, burden"), from cargar ("to load"), from Late Latin carricare.

    Full definition of cargo

    Noun

    cargo

    (countable and uncountable; plural cargos)
    1. Freight carried by a ship, aircraft etc.
      • 1806, James Harrison, The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson"…her whole and entire cargo; and, also, all such other cargoes and property as may have been landed in the island of Teneriffe,…"
      • 1913, Nephi Anderson, Story of Chester Lawrence,"…but human life is worth more than ships or cargos."
    2. (Papua New Guinea) Western material goods.
      • 1995, Martha Kaplan, Neither Cargo Nor Cult: Ritual Politics and the Colonial Imagination in Fiji, Duke University Press, page xi"They wrote of Pacific people with millenarian (and sometimes anti-colonial) expectations who used magical means to get western things (hence the term "cargo" cult)."

    Derived terms

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