load
n. countablen. a large amount of something that a person, vehicle, or machine carries. It can also mean a lot of work or worry that someone has to deal with.
n. the total quantity of material or weight carried by a vehicle, person, or structure. Often refers to the amount of work or data processed by a system at one time.
The truck is carrying a heavy load of wood.
The server crashed because the processing load was too high during the holiday sale.
Engineers must calculate the maximum structural load to ensure the bridge can withstand peak traffic and extreme weather conditions simultaneously.
The sense of “burden” first arose in the 13th century as a secondary meaning of Middle English lode, loade, which had the main significance of “way, course, journey”, from Old English lād (“course, journey; way, street, waterway; leading, carrying; maintenance, support”) (ultimately from Proto-Germanic laidō (“leading, way”), Proto-Indo-European leyt- (“to go, go forth, die”). Cognate with Middle Low German leide (“entourage, escort”), German Leite (“line, course, load”), Swedish led (“way, trail, line”), Icelandic leið (“way, course, route”). As such, load is a doublet of lode, which has preserved the older meaning. Most likely, the semantic extension of the Middle English substantive arose by conflation with the (etymologically unrelated) verb lade; however, Middle English lode occurs only as a substantive; the transitive verb load (“to charge with a load”) is recorded only in the 16th century (frequently in Shakespeare), and (except for the participle laden) has largely supplanted lade in modern English. For the meaning development from PIE, compare Latin carrus (whence carry) akin to currō.
Acronym of living online all day.
Often used in the plural ('loads of') in informal speech to mean 'a lot'.