Word: wagon Part of Speech: noun Etymology: Borrowed from Middle Dutch wagen, from Old Dutch *wagan, from Proto-West Germanic *wagn, from Proto-Germanic *wagnaz (“wagon”), from Proto-Indo-European *weǵʰ- (“to transport”). Generally displaced native cognate wain, from Old English wæġn, of which it is a doublet. Related also to way, weigh. Sense 8 (“woman of loose morals; obnoxious woman”) is probably a derogatory and jocular reference to a woman being “ridden”, that is, mounted for the purpose of sexual intercourse. The verb is derived from the noun. Pronunciation: /ˈwæɡən/, [ˈwæɡən] ~ [ˈwæɡn̩], /ˈwaɡən/, [ˈwaɡən] ~ [ˈwaɡn̩], /ˈwæːɡən/ 1. A heavier four-wheeled (normally horse-drawn) vehicle designed to carry goods (or sometimes people). Example: These wagons and pack-mules will include transportation for all personal baggage, mess chests, cooking utensils, desks, papers, &c. Example: The first waggon was loaded, and moved a few yards along the quay, and the second took its place. There was an order and swiftness over the work that told of a careful preparation. The third waggon took the place of the second and the work of loading it went even faster. Then, at a shout from the Grocer, the loaders threw off their slings, took every man of them a cudgel from beneath his smock, and formed themselves as a guard about the waggons that went away quickly along the quay on their way inland. 2. Abbreviation of toy wagon; A child's riding toy, with the same structure as a wagon (sense 1), pulled or steered by a long handle attached to the front. Labels: abbreviation, alt-of Example: […] [Debra] Van Ausdale transcribes an exchange among two white girls (both aged four) and one Asian girl (age three) who are playing with a wagon. One of the white girls is pulling the other children. When the wagon gets stuck the Asian girl jumps out to help pull. The white girl responds, "No, no. You can't pull this wagon. Only white Americans can pull this wagon." […] Here, a four-year-old is using a construction that joins race and perceptions of citizenship to exclude in her play. Example: In all placs and ages children have played with things, some found by children, some fabricated by them, and some provided by parents or other adults. Today these might include a just-emptied rolled-oats carton salvaged from the kitchen, a knocked together wooden wagon set on cast-off baby buggy wheels, or a gaudy heavy plastic gm set of Chinese manufacture. 3. A shopping cart. Labels: New-England, US 4. A vehicle (wagon) designed to transport goods or people on railway. Example: Various methods have been suggested for effecting this transfer by a bodily removal of whole wagons; either by lifting the bodies from one set of wheels to another, or transferring the wagons, wheels and all, to some kind of truck; but practically these projects wholly fail. […] It is calculated that to bring a train of fifty wagons under the machine, one by one, a horse would have to traverse five miles and a half. Example: The total weight of goods and minerals loaded into wagons on the railways of the United Kingdom during the year 1913, the last complete period of working under normal conditions before the outbreak of war, was 372,037,000 tons, of which 299,129,000 tons, or 80.41 per cent., consisting of coal and minerals. 5. Ellipsis of dinner wagon (“set of light shelves mounted on castors so that it can be pushed around a dining room and used for serving”). Labels: abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis Example: With the important exception of religious myths, the hybridized and grafted Marxist myths are like whole-dessert wagons with almost everybody's favorite sweets—all of them with no calories (costs) and chock-full of nutrients (benefits) guaranteeing everything good for almost everyone, except the few rich; yet all of them also are enflamed by fears and hatreds of the mythical Satans conspiring to steal the dessert wagon and immiserate all the rest of us. Example: The waiters wore red jackets with black lapels, in summer white jackets with green lapels. There was a roast beef wagon. A pastry section in the huge kitchen. 6. Ellipsis of paddy wagon (“police van for transporting prisoners”). Labels: abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis, slang Example: I began as a patrol officer, working the wagon, squad car, and three-wheelers until 1963, when I took the detective exam. Example: I changed into civies and took the two prisoners along with their fingerprints in a patrol wagon along with PTL. Howell of the Sixty-First and a Sixtieth Precinct officer. […] Sometime during the trip, in the confines of the Sixty-Sixth Precinct, a driver started beeping her horn, saying someone had jumped out of the back of the PW. The wagon driver stopped, I ran to the back and saw that my two prisoners were not in the patrol wagon. 7. Ellipsis of station wagon (“type of automobile”); (occasionally, loosely) any car, van, or light truck. Labels: Australia, Canada, US, abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis, informal Example: The woman had been photographed in the driver's seat of a late-model Jeep wagon; walking across what appeared to be a large parking lot; inside her kitchen and her bedroom, blissfully unaware that her privacy was being invaded by binoculars and telephoto lenses in the hands of a slob like Thigpen. 8. Term of abuse. Labels: Ireland, dated, derogatory, slang Example: […] I was in a field last week with Ursula Brogan behind the football pitch. We followed Cissy Caffery there and two boys from the secondary. She’s a wagon. She did it with them one after the other, and we watched. 9. Term of abuse. Labels: Ireland, broadly, derogatory, slang Example: —Don’t know. —She hates us. It’s prob’ly cos Daddy called her a wagon at tha’ meetin’. / Sharon laughed. She got out of bed. / —He didn’t really call Miss O’Keefe a wagon, she told Tracy. —He was only messin’ with yeh. Example: Well fuck yeh, yeh stuck-up little wagon. 10. A kind of prefix used in de Bruijn notation. 11. Buttocks. Labels: slang