freight
n. uncountablen. goods or products that are moved from one place to another by ship, train, truck, or plane. It is often used to talk about large amounts of items being sent for business.
n. goods transported in bulk by truck, train, ship, or aircraft. Often used in commercial contexts to distinguish the cargo itself from the transport vehicle or the service of moving it.
The ship carries heavy freight across the ocean.
Most of the company's freight is moved by rail because it is cheaper than using trucks for long distances.
The logistics manager spent the morning coordinating the incoming freight to ensure that the warehouse had enough floor space for the seasonal inventory arriving by sea.
From Late Middle English freight, freght, freyght [and other forms], a variant of fraught, fraght (“transport of goods or people, usually by water; transportation fee; transportation facilities; cargo or passengers of a ship; (figuratively) burden; ballast of a ship; goods; a charge”), from Middle Dutch vracht, vrecht, and Middle Low German vrecht (“cargo, freight; transportation fee”), from Old Saxon frāht, frēht, from Proto-West Germanic fra- (from Proto-Germanic fra- (prefix meaning ‘completely, fully’)) + aihti (from Proto-Germanic aihtiz (“possessions, property”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eyḱ- (“to come into possession of, obtain; to own, possess”)). The English word can be analysed as for- + aught, and is a doublet of fraught. Cognates * French fret (“cargo, freight; transportation fees; rental of a ship”) * Old English ǣht (“livestock; possession, property; power”) * Old High German frēht (“earnings”) * Portuguese frete (“cargo, freight; transportation fees”) * Spanish flete (“cargo, freight; charter (hire of a vehicle for transporting cargo)”) * Swedish frakt c (“cargo, freight; transportation fees”)
The verb is derived from Late Middle English freighten, freghten, a variant of fraughten, fraghten (“to load (a ship with cargo or passengers); to hire (a ship) for transporting goods; to provide fully (with goods, money, etc.); to stow away”), and then either: * from fraught, fraght (noun) (see etymology 1) + -en (suffix forming the infinitive form of verbs); or * from Middle Dutch vrachten, vrechten (“to load (a ship with cargo or passengers); to hire (a ship) for transporting goods, to fraught”), from vracht, vrecht (noun) (see etymology 1) + -en (suffix forming the infinitive form of verbs). The adjective is: * derived from Middle English freght, freight, freyght, the past participle of fraughten (verb) (see above); and/or * a contraction of freighted, the past participle of the verb.