porte cochère

Syllables: porte coch·èreUK/ˌpɔːt kə(ʊ)ˈʃɛə//ˌpɔɹt koʊˈʃɛɚ/

porte cochère noun: a gateway through which horse carriages pass, often into a courtyard.

Noun

porte cochère (plural porte cochères or portes cochères)

(historical) A gateway through which horse carriages pass, often into a courtyard.
- We had admirable Noſes to ſmell out proper Places, and your Houſes with Porte-Cocheres were ſure to have enough of our Company.1708, Mateo Aleman, chapter III, in [anonymous], transl., The Life of Guzman d’Alfarache: Or, The Spanish Rogue. […], volume I, London: […] R. Bonwick, […], →OCLC, part I, book III, page 400
- [M]oſt of the Houſes having Porte-Cocheres, and Court-yards, for the Conveniency and the Uſe of the Families.1724 April 17 (Gregorian calendar), [John Macky], “Letter I”, in A Journey through the Austrian Netherlands. […], London: […] J. Pemberton, […], and J. Hooke, […], published 1725, →OCLC, page 4
A porch, or roof without walls over a driveway, next to the entrance of a building which a vehicle can stop in or under to allow passengers to embark or disembark without being affected by bad weather.
- Near-synonym: carport (not always differentiated)
- This killing of two birds with one stone, making a porte-cochère and a second-story balcony at the same time, was so attractive to Mrs. Smith that it turned the scale in favour of a change. Her stable and carriage-drive were removed to the other side of the house, and Mrs. John rejoiced as an...1883 August 15, R. C. Gardner, “All Out-doors.—VI.”, in Albion W[inegar] Tourgée, editor, The Continent: An Illustrated Weekly Magazine, volume IV, number 7 (number 79 overall), Philadelphia, Pa....
Synonyms:

carport

Examples of porte cochère in a sentence

I at first perceived, at the exterior, only a long wall, in the center of which was a porte cochère.1846, Eugene Süe, “Regina”, in Martin the Foundling; or, The Memoirs of a Valet de Chambre, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC...
Actually, a porte cochère is a canopy extending from a building to shelter people getting in and out of vehicles.2004, Gary A. Dias, Robbie Dingeman, “Your Home is Your Castle”, in Honolulu CSI: An Introduction to Forensic Science and Criminal...

Synonyms of porte cochère

carport

Forms of porte cochère

plural	porte cochères
plural	portes cochères
alternative form	porte-cochère
alternative form	porte-cochere
alternative form	porte cochere

Origin of porte cochère

Unadapted borrowing from French porte cochère (literally “coach gateway or coachman's gateway”): porte (“door; gateway”) (ultimately from Latin porta (“door; entrance; gate; passage”), from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“to go through; to carry forth, fare”)) + cochère (from coche (“stagecoach”) + -ière (feminine form of -ier (suffix forming the names of occupations, etc.)). Coche is ultimately from Hungarian kocsi (“cart; horse carriage”), from Kocs, a village in Hungary known for making carriages.

Words that rhyme with porte cochère

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about porte cochère

What does porte cochère mean?: Porte cochère means a gateway through which horse carriages pass, often into a courtyard.
How do you use porte cochère in a sentence?: I at first perceived, at the exterior, only a long wall, in the center of which was a porte cochère.
What part of speech is porte cochère?: Porte cochère is a noun.
How do you pronounce porte cochère?: Porte cochère is pronounced /ˌpɔːt kə(ʊ)ˈʃɛə/ (UK).
What is the plural of porte cochère?: The plural of porte cochère is porte cochères.

Words near porte cochère in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: porte cochère (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-porte cochère.oga.

Cite this entry: “porte cochère.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/porte_coch%C3%A8re. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.