Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

chariot

UK/ˈt͡ʃæɹi.ət/US/ˈt͡ʃæɹi.ət/
nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #5,861 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: chariots

A chariot is a two-wheeled cart pulled by horses in ancient times. A war chariot, drive the chariot, chariot racing.

Racing them was the great spectator sport of Rome, with crowds and factions that made modern football look tame. In war it was a mobile platform for an archer rather than a vehicle for charging.

Álvaro Pérez Vilariño · CC BY-SA 2.0

Definitions of chariot

  1. 1nounchariotA two-wheeled cart pulled by horses in ancient times.B1+

    “In the film, the hero races his chariot around the arena behind white horses.”

chariot is a vehicle.

Where it comes from

Old French chariot comes from char, a cart, from Latin carrus, itself borrowed from Gaulish.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *ḱers-

  2. Proto-Indo-European

    *ḱr̥sós

  3. Proto-Celtic

    *karros — wagon

  4. cel-gau

    *karros

  5. Latin

    carrus — wagon

  6. Old French

    chariot

  7. Middle English

    chariot

  8. English, today

    chariot

Built from

  • char · Old French — cart

From Middle English chariot, from Old French chariot, from char (“cart”), from Latin carrus (“wagon”), itself borrowed from cel-gau karros, from Proto-Celtic karros (“wagon”), from Proto-Indo-European ḱr̥sós. Displaced native hrædwæġn.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

chariot in the wild

  • The critical invention that allowed the construction of light, horse-drawn chariots was the spoked wheel.

    Chariot

  • With the institution of formal races and permanent racetracks, chariot racing was adopted by many Greek states and their religious festivals.

    Chariot racing

  • In standard Greek racing practise, each chariot held a single driver and was pulled by four horses, or sometimes two.

    Chariot racing

  • In Latin the word quadrigae is almost always used in the plural and usually refers to the team of four horses rather than the chariot they pull.

    Quadriga

  • During the festival of the Halieia, the ancient Rhodians would sacrifice a quadriga-chariot by throwing it into the sea.

    Quadriga

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the char family

chariotcarnage

chariot — used about once every 1,633 pages · #5,861 · point at the bar for the others