Word.ws English Dictionary

wagon

Syllables: wag·onUK/ˈwæɡən/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/ˈwaɡən/

wagon noun: a heavier four-wheeled (normally horse-drawn) vehicle designed to carry goods (or sometimes people). Also the abbreviation of toy wagon.

wagon: a heavier four-wheeled (normally horse-drawn) vehicle designed to carry goods (or sometimes people)
Image: Gaius Cornelius, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

wagon (plural wagons)

  1. A heavier four-wheeled (normally horse-drawn) vehicle designed to carry goods (or sometimes people).
    • These wagons and pack-mules will include transportation for all personal baggage, mess chests, cooking utensils, desks, papers, &c.1864 June 28, T. S. Bowers (Assistant Adjutant General), “No. 51. [Special Orders No. 44.]”, in Report of the Quartermaster General of the United States Army to the Secretary of War, for the Year...
    • The first waggon was loaded, and moved a few yards along the quay, and the second took its place. There was an order and swiftness over the work that told of a careful preparation. The third waggon took the place of the second and the work of loading it went even faster. Then, at a shout from the...1922 February, H. Harrison, “Plot and Counterplot: A Tale of the Smuggling Canker in the Days Following the Battle of Waterloo”, in The Boy’s Own Paper, volume XLV, part 4, London: “Boy’s Own Paper”...
  2. (New-England, US) A shopping cart.
  3. A vehicle (wagon) designed to transport goods or people on railway.
    • Various methods have been suggested for effecting this transfer by a bodily removal of whole wagons; either by lifting the bodies from one set of wheels to another, or transferring the wagons, wheels and all, to some kind of truck; but practically these projects wholly fail. […] It is calculated...1846, Thornton [Leigh] Hunt, Unity of the Iron Network: Showing how the Last Argument for the Break of Gauge, Competition, is at Variance with the True Interests of the Public, 2nd edition, London...
    • The total weight of goods and minerals loaded into wagons on the railways of the United Kingdom during the year 1913, the last complete period of working under normal conditions before the outbreak of war, was 372,037,000 tons, of which 299,129,000 tons, or 80.41 per cent., consisting of coal and...1918 June 21, H. Kelway-Bamber, “Coal and Mineral Traffic on the Railways of the United Kingdom”, in The Engineer, volume CXXV, number 3260, London: Office for publication and advertisements, […]...
  4. (Ireland, dated, derogatory, slang) A woman of loose morals, a promiscuous woman, a slapper.
    • […] I was in a field last week with Ursula Brogan behind the football pitch. We followed Cissy Caffery there and two boys from the secondary. She’s a wagon. She did it with them one after the other, and we watched.1985, Eugene McCabe, “Roma”, in Heaven Lies about Us: Stories, 1st U.S. edition, New York, N.Y.; London: Bloomsbury, published 2004, →ISBN, page 57
    Synonyms:
    NB: All terms are usually pejorative unless stated otherwise., 304, alley cat, alleycat, amorette, amoret, amorosa, article, Athanasian wench, blowsabella
  5. (Ireland, broadly, derogatory, slang) An obnoxious woman; a bitch; a cow.
    • —Don’t know. —She hates us. It’s prob’ly cos Daddy called her a wagon at tha’ meetin’. / Sharon laughed. She got out of bed. / —He didn’t really call Miss O’Keefe a wagon, she told Tracy. —He was only messin’ with yeh.1990, Roddy Doyle, The Snapper, London: Secker and Warburg, →ISBN; republished New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1992, →ISBN, pages 30–31
    • Well fuck yeh, yeh stuck-up little wagon.1998, Neville Thompson, Two Birds/One Stoned, Dublin: Poolbeg, →ISBN, page 8
  6. A kind of prefix used in de Bruijn notation.
  7. (slang) Buttocks.

Verb

wagon (third-person singular simple present wagons, present participle wagoning or (rare) wagonning, simple past and past participle wagoned or (rare) wagonned)

  1. (US, transitive) To load into a wagon in preparation for transportation; to transport by means of a wagon.
    • The ore is firſt waggoned to the river, a quarter of a mile, then laden on board of canoes, and carried acroſs the river, which is there about 200 yards wide, and then again taken into waggons and carried to he furnace.1781–1782, Thomas Jefferson, “Query VI. A Notice of the Mines and Other Subterraneous Riches; Its Trees, Plants, Fruits, &c.”, in Notes on the State of Virginia. […], London: Printed for John...
    • Bar iron, of the first quality; pig metal and castings, of various denominations; wheat in large quantities; other grain, whiskey, gin, clover-seed, flax-seed, beeswax, butter et cetera, are wagoned to these points, and others on the streams mentioned, and taken down the Susquehanna.1822, “Bellefonte and Philipsburg Turnpike Road Company”, in Documents, Accompanying the Report of the Committee, on Roads, Bridges and Inland Navigation, Read in the Senate of Pennsylvania, on the...
  2. (US, intransitive) To travel in a wagon.
    • [T]he toll was taken off freight on ninety miles of the canal between Huntingdon and Duncan's Island, and subsequently off passengers, to enable the companies to meet the unexpected and heavy expense necessarily incurred by staging and wagoning across the breach in the line.1838, [Joseph Ritner], Message from the Governor to the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. Read in Senate, Dec. 27, 1838, Harrisburg, Pa.: Printed by E[manuel] Guyer, →OCLC, pages 13–14
    • “I remember well the stories my great aunt told me in the late 1940’s. / “The stories of my great-grandfather who wagonned with his family from Gravenhurst, Ontario, to Nipissing Village where he built a log cabin and spent the winter.1975 September 12, Dr. Richardson, “Text of Dr. Richardson’s speech”, in The North Bay Nugget, 69th year, number 74, North Bay, Ont., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 2, column 7

Proper noun capitalized: Wagon

the Wagon

  1. A bright circumpolar asterism of the northern sky, said to resemble a ladle or cart. It is part of the constellation Ursa Major and includes the stars Mizar, Dubhe, and Alkaid.

Also used as

wagon is also the abbreviation of toy wagon.

wagon is also the ellipsis of dinner wagon.

wagon is also the ellipsis of paddy wagon.

wagon is also the ellipsis of station wagon.

wagon meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

wagon in Hindi

वैगन

wagon in Tamil

வேகன்

wagon in Marathi

वॅगन

wagon in Urdu

ویگن, وگن
More languagesFewer languages
wagon in Bengali
ওয়াগন, ওয়াগেন
wagon in Telugu
వ్యాగన్, వాగన్
wagon in Malayalam
വാഗൺ
wagon in Kannada
ವ್ಯಾಗನ್
wagon in Punjabi
ਵੈਗਨ
wagon in Gujarati
વેગન, વૅગન
wagon in Odia
ୱାଗନ୍, ୱାଗନ, ୱେଗନ
wagon in Sanskrit
अनस् anas
wagon in Nepali
वैगन, व्यागन
wagon in Arabic
عَرَبَة ʕaraba
wagon in Thai
เกวียน gwiian

Examples of wagon in a sentence

  • Galway is 37 miles from tide water at Albany, to which place he formerly wagonned his produce.1824 August 8, “New-York Farming. From the American Farmer. Observations of a Correspondent on a Visit to Saratoga.”, in Daily National...
  • So he made the neighborhood rounds collecting these items and then wagonned them down town to the junk yard.1985 July 10, Wesley Karney, “That wagon’s been draggin’ behind many a bright-eyed boy”, in The Olympian, Olympia, Wash.: Gannett, →ISSN...

All 40 example sentences with wagon

Synonyms of wagon

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of wagon

Forms of wagon

Noun
pluralwagons
alternative form (dated)waggon
Verb
third-person singular presentwagons
present participlewagoning
past participlewagoned
pastwagoned
present participle (rare)wagonning
past participle (rare)wagonned
past (rare)wagonned
Proper noun
alternative formWaggon

Plural of wagon: wagons

Origin of wagon

Borrowed from Middle Dutch wagen, from Old Dutch *wagan, from Proto-West Germanic *wagn, from Proto-Germanic *wagnaz (“wagon”), from Proto-Indo-European *weǵʰ- (“to transport”). Generally displaced native cognate wain, from Old English wæġn, of which it is a doublet. Related also to way, weigh. Sense 8 (“woman of loose morals; obnoxious woman”) is probably a derogatory and jocular reference to a woman being “ridden”, that is, mounted for the purpose of sexual intercourse. The verb is derived from the noun.

Derived either as a synonym of Wain, i.e. Charles' Wain, or directly from the wagonlike shape of the constellation. Compare also the synonym Northern Waggoner. See wagon and wain.

Words formed from wagon

Phrases with wagon

93 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with wagon

Questions about wagon

What does wagon mean?
Wagon means a heavier four-wheeled (normally horse-drawn) vehicle designed to carry goods (or sometimes people).
What is wagon in Hindi?
Wagon in Hindi is वैगन. See Wagon meaning in Hindi.
How do you use wagon in a sentence?
Galway is 37 miles from tide water at Albany, to which place he formerly wagonned his produce.
What part of speech is wagon?
Wagon can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce wagon?
Wagon is pronounced /ˈwæɡən/ (UK).
What is the plural of wagon?
The plural of wagon is wagons.

Words near wagon in the dictionary

  1. Wagnon
  2. Wagnons
  3. wago
  4. Wagogo
  5. Wagoma
  6. wagon
  7. wagon jobber
  8. wagon jobbers
  9. wagon load
  10. wagon loads
  11. wagon lock

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wagon (page history and authors); Wagon (page history and authors); wagon (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wagon (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wagon (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wagon (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wagon (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wagon (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wagon (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wagon (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wagon (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wagon (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wagon (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wagon (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-wagon.ogg, en-au-wagon.ogg.

Cite this entry: “wagon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wagon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.