wagoner
nounEtymology From wagon + -er.
1
Someone who drives a wagon.
- Near-synonyms: wagonman, wainman, wagonmaster, carter, cartman
- Now give me some surance that thou art Revenge, Stab them, or tear them on thy chariot-wheels; And then I’ll come and be thy waggoner, And whirl along with thee about the globe.c. 1588–1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii]:
4 more examples
- Places, then, being taken for Esther and me in the Chester waggon, I pass over a very immaterial scene of leave-taking, at which I droped a few tears betwixt grief and joy; and, for the same reasons of insignificance, skip over all that happened to me on the road, such as the waggoner’s looking liquorish on me, the schemes laid for me by some of the passengers, which were defeated by the valiance of my guardian Esther […]1749, [John Cleland], “[Letter the First]”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], volume I, London: […] [Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC:
- 1819, William Wordsworth, The Waggoner, Canto I, lines 23-25, ’Tis Benjamin the Waggoner; Who long hath trod this toilsome way, Companion of the night and day.
- That honest wagoner is thinking of his dinner, getting sadly dry in the oven at this late hour; but he will not touch it till he has fed his horses,–the strong, submissive, meek-eyed beasts, who, I fancy, are looking mild reproach at him from between their blinkers, that he should crack his whip at them in that awful manner as if they needed that hint!1860, George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Book I, Chapter 1:
- He met a waggoner and tried to make him understand, but the tale he told and his appearance were so wild—his hat had fallen off in the pit—that the man simply drove on.1895–1897, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 2, in The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, published 1898, →OCLC, (please specify the page number(s)):
- Derived terms
- Northern Waggoner
- Related terms
- wagonmaker, wagonwright, wainwright