Cargo

//ˈkɑːɡəʊ// name, noun, verb

name, noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Freight carried by a ship, aircraft, or motor vehicle. countable, uncountable

    "The plane was overloaded with cargo. It was a cargo of live animals."

  2. 2
    goods carried by a large vehicle wordnet
  3. 3
    Western material goods. Papua-New-Guinea, countable, uncountable

    "The principal change was that two of the 'satans', Kilibob and Manup, were now identified by different groups as God and Jesus Christ, as cargo deities. This expressed the return to hostility towards Europeans and a reassessment of native rights to the cargo."

Verb
  1. 1
    To load with freight. transitive
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname. countable, uncountable
  2. 2
    A village in Kingmoor parish, Carlisle, Cumbria, England (OS grid ref NY3659). countable, uncountable
  3. 3
    A locality in the Cabonne council area, central New South Wales, Australia. countable, uncountable

Example

More examples

"A cargo vessel, bound for Athens, sank in the Mediterranean without a trace."

Etymology

Borrowed from Spanish cargo (“load, burden”), from cargar (“to load”), from Late Latin carricō. Doublet of charge and carga.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.