freighter

[frey-ter]

noun

1. a vessel used mainly for carrying cargo.

2. a large aircraft or spacecraft used primarily for transporting cargo and equipment.

   The space station of the future will be supplied by robot freighters.

3. a person whose occupation it is to receive and forward freight.

4. a person for whom freight is transported; shipper.

freighter

/ ˈfreɪtə /

noun

1. a ship or aircraft designed for transporting cargo

2. a person concerned with the loading or chartering of a ship

Word History and Origins

Origin of freighter¹

First recorded in 1615–25; freight + -er ¹

Example Sentences

During that period, in the waters off Cape Hatteras, German submarines sank more than eighty merchant tankers, freighters, and Allied warships, and hundreds of people, most of them merchant marines, were killed.

Read more on Literature

The ship they were particularly anxious to get quickly into port was the Aleksandrovsk, a freighter carrying twenty-four hydrogen bomb warheads for intermediate-range missiles, along with forty-four tactical nuclear warheads.

Read more on Literature

Anxiety filled the city’s atmosphere, especially early in the war, when Allied freighters were being torpedoed off the coast, tragically framed against the city’s nighttime glow.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

When you think about the folk era, when it was really hot — burning hot — it was hobos on freighters writing songs about social injustice.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

After the telegram arrived, instructing him to head to Le Harve, the 19-year-old discovered the only available ship was a freighter packed with army lorries, according to the Royal Navy.

Read more on BBC

Related Words

• car 
• crate 
• jeep 
• lorry 
• pickup 
• rig 
• van 
• wagon