Other forms: coaching, coaches, coached
A coach is the person who trains a team and decides how it plays. Standing on the touchline in a wet jacket, shouting one name over and over, drawing arrows on a whiteboard at half time.
In Britain a coach is also a long-distance bus — a coach to Manchester, a coach trip to the coast, the coach station — but not the bus that runs across town. It is a railway carriage too, and in old books the closed horse-drawn carriage with a driver up front. The verb is everywhere now: she coaches the under-11s, he was coached through his interviews, and a life coach charges by the hour for it. American English adds coach class, the cheap seats on a plane. Trainer is close but not identical: a coach picks the tactics, a trainer works the body.
1nouncoachA person who trains a sports team or athlete and decides its tactics.~73%
“The new coach dropped three players in his first week.”
synonyms: trainer, manager
2nounskillA person who trains someone in a skill other than a sport — speaking, singing, management.~16%
“She hired a coach to help with public speaking.”
3nouncomfortableIn British English, a comfortable bus used for long journeys.~5%
“We took the overnight coach to Edinburgh.”
4nouncarriageA carriage of a train.~2%
“The front coach was almost empty.”
5nounclosedA closed horse-drawn carriage.~2%
“A coach and four waited outside the inn.”
6verbteamTo train a person or a team.~2%
“He coaches swimming on Saturday mornings.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 18 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: trainer
The Hungarian town of Kocs built carts and ran them between Vienna and Budapest, and the carriage made there took the town's name: kocsi. It travelled on as German Kutsche, then Middle French coche, then English coach. The trainer sense is Oxford student slang from about 1830 — a tutor who carried you through your exams, the way a coach carried passengers — and the sporting coach turns up in 1861.
Hungarian
kocsi
German
Kutsche
Middle French
coche
English, today
coach
Borrowed from Middle French coche, from German Kutsche, from Hungarian kocsi. According to historians, the coach was named after the small Hungarian town of Kocs, which made a livelihood from cart building and transport between Vienna and Budapest. The meaning “instructor/trainer” is from Oxford University slang (c. 1830) for a “tutor” who “carries” one through an exam; the athletic sense is from 1861.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA