gharry

English

A horsedrawn gharry in Kolkata, circa 1903

Etymology

Hindi गाड़ी gāṛi: a wheeled cart, carriage; a car, truck, bus. From the Old Indo-Aryan gāḍḍa- through the Prakrit gaḍḍi- [1]

Pronunciation

IPA(key): /ˈɡæɹi/

Noun

gharry (plural gharries)

  1. A wheeled cart or carriage (usually horsedrawn), used especially in Myanmar.
    • 1934, George Orwell, chapter 10, in Burmese Days:
      He thought of Rosa McFee, the Eurasian girl he had seduced in Mandalay in 1913. The way he used to sneak down to the house in a gharry with the shutters down []
    • 1952, Norman Lewis, Golden Earth:
      There were ranks of gharries that appeared to do no serious business, although occasionally a group of Shans would wake up a driver, bundle into one and go for a quick spin round the bazaar, much as in the old days one took a five shilling flip around the aerodrome in a plane.
    • 1977, Pablo Neruda, Memoirs, translated by Hardie St. Martin, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Chapter 4, p. 86,
      My British friends saw me in a gharry, a little horse-drawn cab used mainly for ephemeral trysts in transit, and offered me the kindly advice that a consul should never use these vehicles for any purpose.
  2. (South Africa, military, slang) A jeep or small truck for conveying troops.

References

  1. McGregor, R.S, ed. The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary, Oxford university press. 1993
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