cargo

Etymology

From Spanish cargo (“load, burden”), from cargar (“to load”), from Late Latin carricō. Doublet of charge and carga.

noun

1. Freight carried by a ship, aircraft, or motor vehicle.
   […]her whole and entire cargo; and, also, all such other cargoes and property as may have been landed in the island of Teneriffe,[…] 1806, James Harrison, The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson
   […]but human life is worth more than ships or cargos. 1913, Nephi Anderson, Story of Chester Lawrence
   How will heaven be filled if the earth ceases to send its cargoes? 2005, J. M. Coetzee, “Five”, in Slow Man, New York: Viking, page 34
2. (Papua New Guinea) Western material goods.
   The principal change was that two of the 'satans', Kilibob and Manup, were now identified by different groups as God and Jesus Christ, as cargo deities. This expressed the return to hostility towards Europeans and a reassessment of native rights to the cargo. 1964, Peter Lawrence, Road Belong Cargo
   In this study of colonial and postcolonial Fiji, Martha Kaplan examines the effects of narratives made real and traces a complex history that began neither as a search for cargo, nor as a cult. 1995, Martha Kaplan, Neither Cargo Nor Cult
   Why is it that Europeans, despite their likely genetic disadvantage and (in modern times) their undoubted developmental disadvantage, ended up with much more of the cargo?· 1998, Jared M. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, page 22
   He was the only one to tell me that he thought it was possible that cargo was made by the ancestors. One or two others were noncommittal, but most clearly denied it. 2002, Dorothy K. Billings, Cargo Cult as Theater: Political Performance in the Pacific, page 60
   People turned to traditional or innovative religious ritual to obtain "cargo." 2004, Lamont Lindstrom, “Cargo Cult at the Third Millennium”, in Holger Jebens, editor, Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique
   And beyond antrhopologists and Islanders, others have been enchanted by cargo as well. 2019, Lamont Lindstrom ·, Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond, page 5