Noun

Wikipedia

Singular carriage

Plural carriages

carriage (plural carriages)

1. A wheeled vehicle, generally drawn by horse power.

   The carriage ride was very romantic.

2. A railroad car drawn by a locomotive.
3. (archaic) A manner of walking and moving in general; how one carries oneself, bearing.

   His noble carriage concealed the heart of a knave.

4. (archaic) One's behaviour, or way of conducting oneself towards others.
   • 1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society 1973, p. 407:

     He now assumed a carriage to me so very different from what he had lately worn, and so nearly resembling his behaviour the first week of our marriage, that [...] he might, possibly, have rekindled my fondness for him.

5. The part of a typewriter supporting the paper.
6. (US) (local to New England) A shopping cart.
7. (British) A baby stroller; a baby carriage.

A carriage is a wheeled vehicle for people, usually horse-drawn; litters (palanquins) and sedan chairs are excluded, these being litters or wheelless vehicles. The carriage is especially designed for private passenger use and for comfort or elegance, though some are also used to transport goods. It may be light, smart and fast or heavy, large and comfortable. Carriages normally have suspension using leaf springs, elliptical springs (in the 19th century) or leather strapping. A public passenger vehicle would not usually be called a carriage – terms for these include stagecoach, charabanc and omnibus.

Overview

The word carriage (abbreviated carr or cge) is from Old Northern French cariage, to carry in a vehicle. The word car, then meaning a kind of two-wheeled cart for goods, also came from Old Northern French about the beginning of the 14th century; it was also used for railway carriages, and was extended to cover automobile around the end of the nineteenth century, when early models were called horseless carriages.

A carriage is sometimes called a team, as in "horse and team". A carriage with its horse is a rig. An elegant horse-drawn carriage with its retinue of servants is an equipage. A carriage together with the horses, harness and attendants is a turnout or setout. A procession of carriages is a cavalcade.