Other forms: crates, crated, crating
A crate is a strong open box, usually wooden, for carrying goods. A crate of bottles, wooden crates, stacked in crates.
It differs from a box in being built for repeated heavy use, and the slatted sides are what make it a crate. Milk crates, fruit crates and shipping crates are the common kinds. A crate is also a unit of quantity: a crate of beer. In dog training, a crate is the wire cage a dog sleeps in, and crate training is the whole method. Note that crates are stacked, and stacking is most of what they are designed for.
1nouncrateA strong open box for carrying goods.
“Every crate had to be opened and checked.”
2verbpackTo pack something into a crate.
“The whole collection was crated and shipped in a week.”
crate is a container.
Dutch krat meant basketwork, from a root about plaiting — the same family as cradle. The earliest crates were woven rather than nailed, which is why the word's ancestors are all about weaving.
Proto-Indo-European
*gretH- — plaiting, wicker, basket, cradle
Proto-Germanic
*kratjô
Old Dutch
*kratta
Middle Dutch
cratte — basketware, mold
Dutch
krat — crate, large box, basket
English, today
crate
Built from
From Dutch krat (“crate, large box, basket”), from Middle Dutch cratte (“basketware, mold”), from Old Dutch kratta, kratto (“basket”), from Proto-Germanic kratjô, krattijô (“basket”), from Proto-Indo-European gretH- (“plaiting, wicker, basket, cradle”), from Proto-Indo-European ger- (“to bind, twist, wind”). Cognate with West Frisian kret (“wheelbarrow”), German Krätze (“basket”), Old English cræt, ceart (“cart, wagon, chariot”), Old Norse kartr (“wagon”), modern English cart. Wider cognates include Sanskrit ग्रन्थ (“a binding”). Alternatively from Latin crātis (“wickerwork”), perhaps from the same PIE root.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA