ˈgo-cart
[f. go v. + cart.]
1. A light frame-work, without bottom, moving on castors or rollers, in which a child may learn to walk without danger of falling.
| 1689 Prior Ep. to Shephard 86 As young children, who are try'd in Go-carts, to keep their steps from sliding. 1711 Steele Spect. No. 109 ¶4 The Ladies now walk as if they were in a Go-cart. 1800 M. Edgeworth Belinda (1832) I. v. 99 Put her into a hoop, and she looks as pitiful a figure..as much a prisoner, as a child in a go-cart. |
| fig. 1710 Mrs. Manley Mem. Europe I. 243 They..Petitioned Cæsar, That he would be pleas'd to Reign alone. They ask'd that his Go Carts might be dismissed. 1847 Emerson Repr. Men, Napoleon Wks. (Bohn) I. 377 All men know..that the institutions we so volubly commend are go-carts and baubles. 1879 E. Garrett House by Works II. 11 The rest of us must be thankful for the little go-carts which help us to totter on the right way. |
b. A child's carriage drawn by hand.
| 1854 Thackeray Newcomes I. ii. 18 Upsetting his two little brothers in a go-cart. 1887 Religious Herald 24 Mar. (Cent.), I used to draw her to school on a go-cart nearly half a century ago. |
2. Applied to a litter, palankeen, or the like.
| 1676 Character Quack Doctor in Strutt Sports & Past. (1876) 317 The Sultan Gilgal, being violently afflicted with a spasmus, came six hundred leagues to meet me in a go-cart. 1897 M. Kingsley W. Africa 31, I got into a 'rickshaw, locally called a go-cart. |
3. A hand-cart.
| 1759 Goldsm. Bee No. 2 ¶12 She [Mrs. Roundabout] put me in mind of my Lord Bantam's sheep, which are obliged to have their monstrous tails trundled along in a go-cart. 1803 R. Edington Plan Penitentiary Ho. 78 The waggons now used..are not much above the construction of go-carts, they have neither brakes to retard their motion down hill, nor aids to propel them up hill. 1838 F. W. Simms Public Works Gt. Brit. 65 The hand barrow or go-cart is used for the purpose of conveying earth. |
4. A kind of light open carriage.
| 1828 Sporting Mag. XXI. 240 He started in a go-cart for Bracknell. 1837 W. B. Adams Eng. Pleas. Carriages xvii. 278 They all more or less bear a strong resemblance to the vehicles called ‘go-carts’, which ply for hire..in the neighbourhood of Lambeth. 1858 Hughes Scouring White Horse vi. (1859) 122 A dozen parties, in all sorts of odd go-carts and other vehicles. |
Hence
† go-carted ppl. a.| 1748 Richardson Clarissa (1811) VIII. 246 The hanging-sleeved, go-carted property of hired slaves. |