a land carriage with two wheels, drawn commonly by horses, to carry heavy goods, &c. from one place to another. The word seems formed from the French charrette, which signifies the same, or rather the Latin carreta, a diminutive of carrus. See CARR.

In London and Westminster carts shall not carry more than twelve sucks of meal, seven hundred and fifty bricks, one chaldron of coals, &c. on pain of forfeiting one of the horses. (6 Geo. I. cap. 6.) By the laws of the city, carr-men are forbidden to ride either on their carts or horses. They are to lead or drive them on foot through the streets, on the forfeiture of ten shillings. (Stat. 1 Geo. I. cap. 57.) Criminals used to be drawn to execution on a cart. Bawds and other malefactors are whipped at the cart's tail.

Scripture makes mention of a sort of carts or drags used by the Jews to do the office of threshing. They were supported on low thick wheels, bound with iron, which were rolled up and down on the sheaves, to break them, and force out the corn. Something of the like kind also obtained among the Romans, under the denomination of plaustra, of which Virgil makes mention. (Georg. I.)

Tardaque Elocusine matris volventia plaustra, Tribulaque, trahaeque.

On which Servius observes, that trahae denotes a cart without wheels, and tribula a sort of cart armed on all sides with teeth, chiefly used in Africa for threshing corn. The Septuagint and St Jerome represent these carts as furnished with saws, insomuch that their surface was beset with teeth. David having taken Rabbah, the capital of the Ammonites, ordered all the inhabitants to be crushed to pieces under such carts, moving on wheels set with iron teeth; and the king of Damascus is said to have treated the Israelites of the land of Gilead in the same manner.