Other forms: barges, barged
A barge is a long, flat-bottomed boat built to carry heavy loads on calm water. You see them sitting low in a canal under a cargo of gravel, or tied at the bank with a chimney and pots of flowers on the roof.
Most barges have no engine of their own — a tug pushes or pulls them, which is why they travel in strings on the Rhine and the Mississippi. There is a grander sort too: the ceremonial barge that carries a monarch down a river on a state occasion. The verb has left the water entirely and kept the weight: to barge is to shove your way through, and it takes in, into or past. He barged into the room without knocking; she barged past me on the stairs. Barge in is the one you will hear most, and it means interrupting rudely.
1nounbargeA long flat boat used to carry cargo on rivers and canals.
“A barge loaded with sand came slowly under the bridge.”
2nounlargeA large decorated boat used on ceremonial occasions.
“The royal barge was rowed past the crowds on the bank.”
3verbshoveTo move somewhere roughly and forcefully, pushing others aside.
“He barged through the queue without a word.”
4verbenterTo enter or interrupt rudely.
“Sorry to barge in, but the taxi is here.”
barge is a boat.
Barge came in through Middle English from Old French barge, a boat, and behind that stand Vulgar Latin barga and Latin barca. Further back it is Greek: βᾶρις, the name for an Egyptian boat on the Nile, taken from a Coptic word for a small boat and from Egyptian before that. A word for a gravel boat on an English canal has been drifting downstream for four thousand years.
Middle English
barge
English, today
barge
From Middle English barge. From Middle English barge, borrowed from Old French barge (“boat”), from Vulgar Latin barga, a variant of Latin barca, a regular syncope of Vulgar Latin barica, from la-cla bāris, from Ancient Greek βᾶρις (“Egyptian boat”), from cop ⲃⲁⲁⲣⲉ (“small boat”), from egx-dem br, from {{der|en|egy|bꜣjr{{egy-h|b-bA-A-y:r*
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA