Noun

cargo (countable and uncountable; plural cargos or cargoes)

1. Freight carried by a ship, aircraft etc.
   • 1806, James Harrison, The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson

     "…her whole and entire cargo; and, also, all such other cargoes and property as may have been landed in the island of Teneriffe,…"

   • 1913, Nephi Anderson, Story of Chester Lawrence,

     "…but human life is worth more than ships or cargos."

2. (Papua New Guinea) Western material goods.
   • 1995, Martha Kaplan, Neither Cargo Nor Cult: Ritual Politics and the Colonial Imagination in Fiji, Duke University Press, page xi

     "They wrote of Pacific people with millenarian (and sometimes anti-colonial) expectations who used magical means to get western things (hence the term "cargo" cult)."

Derived terms

• cargo cult

French

Noun

cargo m. (plural cargos)

1. ship designed to carry a cargo

Italian

Noun

cargo m. (plural carghi)

1. cargo boat
2. freighter (boat or plane)

Cargo (or freight) is goods or produce transported, generally for commercial gain, by ship, aircraft, train, van or truck. In modern times, containers are used in most intermodal long-haul cargo transport.

Transportation types