Still a funny meme and fun to play with words like this or the classic: “why do you park in the driveway and drive on the parkway..?”
In English, or at least American English- “cargo” is used with land vehicles, sea vehicles, air and space or any other type of vehicle; as is the term “shipment,” neither is exclusive to boats or cars etc.
Cargo is a noun- it is the thing or things being transported. A ship carries cargo as does a truck (hence the term and vehicle class “cargo van” etc.) when the item(s) are no longer in transit they are no longer cargo- eg: the shirt you ordered on Amazon is “cargo” on the truck, but once you receive it and place it in your closet you wouldn’t refer to that shirt as “cargo” such as to say: “I think I’ll wear this cargo today…”
So a piece of cargo is a singular item in a larger bulk- and the total of whatever goods or materials of commerce or purpose you place inside of the transport can be referred to as “cargo” being carried by that conveyance.
Many pieces of cargo or singular pieces of a cargo can be part of a shipment, but a conveyance may have many shipments among its cargo. EG: a large train might stop at 14 stations where cargo is loaded and unloaded on a trip crossing international borders. Every item being transported makes up the “cargo” of the train, but each stop likely will have its own shipment or multiple shipments for different recipients. If the train stops to unload a shipment for the postal service, that shipment is processed into cargo and broken into smaller shipments and loaded as cargo to carriers who then deliver the cargo in smaller shipments like your shirt from
Amazon. They unload the cargo and thus upon reaching its destination it is no longer cargo; you receive your shipment.
Interestingly perhaps- cargo comes to English through Spanish from origins in the Latin carricāre, which basically means to load a vehicle. The type of vehicle doesn’t matter in that usage, and in Spanish it simply means to “load” without a vehicle being part of the definition.
Shipping on the other hand is usually said to come through old English, and unlike “carry” or “cargo” where the presence of the word “car” which happens to be a type of vehicle is essentially coincidence- the “ship” in shipping does at its root refer to ships, water vessels.
Shipping came to describe all sorts of transport of goods not just by sea.
In Latin “carrum” was a two wheeled chariot. Through Latin influences languages like French we eventually got the word “carry” and “carriage.” The modern use of term “car” is an evolution of language responding to new inventions. “Automobile” “horseless carriage” and other words were used to refer to what we might call “cars and trucks” but “car” in English-
- dates to at least 1300 and basically meant a “cart” but since the word existed and had associations such as carrying people or goods and the general shape or layout etc. there were other things that got the name like the “cars” of gondola and such- which may or may not have “wheels” for riding along a cable, “elevator cars” being the part of an elevator you ride in, balloon baskets etc etc. so “car” was used to refer to transports before the internal combustion or steam engine powered vehicles like what we know as a “car.” Through that same word and usage we came to call most modern 4+ wheeled road vehicles used in daily life “cars.” So in many cases it isn’t that these things are based on a modern word or it’s usage, but that the modern word and usage are based off these older roots.
Of course sometimes the relation is almost nonexistent. “Caravan” has “car” in it, we could assume that it comes from “car” or “carriage” -a group of carriages or cars traveling together is often called a caravan, so it seems to fit.
This isn’t the case though. Caravan is a case where English borrowed a word from a language with different history and modified the sounds and spelling to fit English. Caravan came to English through Persian- a similar family of indo european language but distinct- the word “karwan”
Which became “Carouon” and eventually- caravan in English. The meanings of the words are essentially the same in that sense but over time “caravan” would come to also apply to ships (later somewhat phased out in usage) and even to mean a single covered wagon instead of a group. In some countries certain styles of vehicle or trailer are still called “caravans” and this is a legacy use example of the meaning when used to refer to a singular covered wagon.
Fun stuff. And of course- etymology is always being studied and debated so this isn’t “gospel” fact, just the facts as I have learned them. Pluto was a planet to most once and is still a planet to some, and words are even more subjective as we simply have whatever records are available to try and deduce what words came into use when and their relations etc. conflicting information, new discoveries, and all sorts of mysterious perils lay in constructing things from the remnants of history second hand.
In English, or at least American English- “cargo” is used with land vehicles, sea vehicles, air and space or any other type of vehicle; as is the term “shipment,” neither is exclusive to boats or cars etc.
Cargo is a noun- it is the thing or things being transported. A ship carries cargo as does a truck (hence the term and vehicle class “cargo van” etc.) when the item(s) are no longer in transit they are no longer cargo- eg: the shirt you ordered on Amazon is “cargo” on the truck, but once you receive it and place it in your closet you wouldn’t refer to that shirt as “cargo” such as to say: “I think I’ll wear this cargo today…”
Many pieces of cargo or singular pieces of a cargo can be part of a shipment, but a conveyance may have many shipments among its cargo. EG: a large train might stop at 14 stations where cargo is loaded and unloaded on a trip crossing international borders. Every item being transported makes up the “cargo” of the train, but each stop likely will have its own shipment or multiple shipments for different recipients. If the train stops to unload a shipment for the postal service, that shipment is processed into cargo and broken into smaller shipments and loaded as cargo to carriers who then deliver the cargo in smaller shipments like your shirt from
Amazon. They unload the cargo and thus upon reaching its destination it is no longer cargo; you receive your shipment.
Shipping on the other hand is usually said to come through old English, and unlike “carry” or “cargo” where the presence of the word “car” which happens to be a type of vehicle is essentially coincidence- the “ship” in shipping does at its root refer to ships, water vessels.
Shipping came to describe all sorts of transport of goods not just by sea.
In Latin “carrum” was a two wheeled chariot. Through Latin influences languages like French we eventually got the word “carry” and “carriage.” The modern use of term “car” is an evolution of language responding to new inventions. “Automobile” “horseless carriage” and other words were used to refer to what we might call “cars and trucks” but “car” in English-
This isn’t the case though. Caravan is a case where English borrowed a word from a language with different history and modified the sounds and spelling to fit English. Caravan came to English through Persian- a similar family of indo european language but distinct- the word “karwan”
Which became “Carouon” and eventually- caravan in English. The meanings of the words are essentially the same in that sense but over time “caravan” would come to also apply to ships (later somewhat phased out in usage) and even to mean a single covered wagon instead of a group. In some countries certain styles of vehicle or trailer are still called “caravans” and this is a legacy use example of the meaning when used to refer to a singular covered wagon.