handbarrow
nounEtymology From Middle English handbarow, handbarwe, equivalent to hand + barrow.
1
A frame, supported by poles, used for carrying things; similar to a litter or stretcher.
- […] they framed a thing like a hand barrow and carryed this selfe-helpelesse person on their bare shoulders twelve miles to his residence:1634, William Wood, chapter 7, in New Englands Prospects, section 2, pages 71-72:
- Here they went with a kind of Hand-Barrow, and lay’d the Dead Bodies on it, and carry’d them out to the Carts;1722, Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, page 105:
1 more example
- “I am to have it [my harp] to-morrow; but how do you think it is to be conveyed? Not by a waggon or cart;—Oh! no, nothing of that kind could be hired in the village. I might as well have asked for porters and a hand-barrow.”1814, Jane Austen, chapter 6, in Mansfield Park, volume 1, page 119:
2
Any wheeled cart or box propelled by hand.
- The next conveyance (which, indeed, is the most general) is the costermonger’s hand-barrow. These are very light in their make, with springs terminating at the axle.1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1, page 27:
- She mentioned once that the car in which they were riding had been bought with the proceeds of her last novel. ‘With the proceeds of my last novel,’ said Henry [James] meditatively, ‘I purchased a small go-cart, or hand-barrow, on which my guests’ luggage is wheeled from the station to my house […]’1947, Percy Lubbock, chapter 5, in Portrait of Edith Wharton, page 69: