Other forms: carts, carted, carting
To cart something is to carry it awkwardly from place to place. Cart it upstairs, carting boxes about, he carted the whole lot home.
It carries a tone of grumbling — carting things is heavier and less willing than carrying them. As a noun a cart is a small open vehicle pulled by a horse or pushed by hand, and in American English a shopping cart is what Britain calls a trolley. Online, your cart is the list of what you are about to buy. Note put the cart before the horse, meaning to do things in the wrong order.
1verbcartTo carry something awkwardly from place to place.
“He carted the same box between four houses.”
2nounsmallA small open vehicle pulled or pushed.
“The cart was still in the barn with one wheel off.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
cart is a carrying, or a small vehicle.
Old Norse kartr meant a wagon, from a root about wickerwork — the earliest carts had woven sides. Crate and cradle share that root, so all three are named after basketwork.
Old Norse
kartr
Middle English
cart
English, today
cart
Built from
From Middle English cart, from Old Norse kartr. From Middle English cart, kart, from Old Norse kartr (“wagon; cart”), merged with native Old English cræt (“a chariot; cart”), from Proto-Germanic krattaz, krattijô, kradō, from Proto-Indo-European gret- (“tracery; wattle; cradle; cage; basket”), from ger- (“to turn, wind”). Cognate with West Frisian kret (“wheelbarrow for hauling dung”), Dutch krat, kret (“crate; wheelbarrow for hauling dung”), German Krätze (“basket; pannier”). Wider cognates include Sanskrit ग्रन्थ (“a binding”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA