Cart

The cart was invented nearly the same time as the wheel somewhere around 2000 BC. It was originally a box with wheels attached to both sides and later had an axle under the box. It had handles that protruded out in front of the box to which was tied a draught animal (horse, goat, whatever) to pull the cart. One could load the cart with heavy items to be transported as far as one wanted. The trick to building a great cart was to have the wheels positioned slightly to the rear of the balance point so the box was easiest to pull without tipping

In pre Elizabethan times a prisoner condemned to death was transported to the place of execution in a cart to publicly humiliate them. In Elizabeth I time prisoners were tied to a cart-tail, a particular post, to be whipped in public. In earlier times carts had two wheels. Examples of the evolution of the cart include the chariot and the rickshaw. Nowadays we have a golf cart, which has four wheels

The shopping cart has four wheels and is pushed rather than pulled. A virtual shopping cart is the electronic file where your purchases in places like Amazon are kept as you build up your order. A cartwheel can be the wheel on a cart. It can also refer to the acrobatic feat of rolling like a spoked wheel where the arms/hands and legs/feet are the spokes. I don’t think I can do it. Can you?

To speak of ‘a cartload’ we refer to everything, all of it. A buffet can have a desert cart associated with it, where a server comes around after you have your plate of food, to tempt you to take a sweet cake. The wheelbarrow, a box on a single wheel, can be found nowadays in a two wheeled version, a cart. To cart something is to carry it, but not necessarily in an actual cart. You can cart me away under your arm

There is an assembly of pieces that is called a Forces on Dynamics Cart With Hanging Mass, which assembly is used to demonstrate Newton’s second law of physics. Check it out, huh. In hospitals there are code carts, a different one for heart attack, for violent patients, for operating room support, etc. These are four wheeled, with an array of tools etc to help deal with the thing that is happening. Got one of these?