kartr

Cart comes from Old Norse kartr, and before that from Proto-Germanic *krat-, likely related to a root meaning 'to twist' or 'to weave' — referring to the woven basket body of early carts. The word entered English during the Danelaw period, roughly 800–1000 CE, when Norse settlers occupied much of eastern and northern England. It displaced no native English word because it named something specific: a two-wheeled vehicle, as opposed to the four-wheeled wagen (wagon).

The two-wheeled cart was one of the most important technologies of the medieval world. It was lighter than a wagon, could navigate narrow lanes, and required only one draft animal. English agriculture depended on it. The Domesday Book of 1086 counts carts among the assets of manors. By the thirteenth century, the word had expanded: a carter was someone who drove a cart, carting was the act of transporting goods, and cartage was the fee charged for it.

The cart also became a vehicle of public punishment and humiliation. In medieval England, convicted criminals were drawn through the streets in a cart — the origin of the phrase 'to cart off.' Women accused of being scolds were carted through town. The phrase 'to put the cart before the horse' appears by the 1500s, meaning to reverse the proper order. The simple vehicle accumulated proverbs as steadily as it accumulated miles.

Shopping carts appeared in 1937, invented by Sylvan Goldman in Oklahoma City for his Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain. Golf carts followed in the 1950s. The word that named a Norse two-wheeled farm vehicle now names any small wheeled platform. Cart has become one of the most productive words in English: go-kart, cartwheel, carte blanche (via French), à la carte. The Vikings gave English a word, and English never stopped using it.