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coach

KOHCH · noun

HungarianGermanMiddle FrenchEnglish

Origin

English coach comes from Middle French coche, borrowed from German Kutsche, which came from Hungarian kocsi. Historians say the word traces back to Kocs, a small Hungarian town known for building carts and running transport routes between Vienna and Budapest.

Journey

The word first named a horse-drawn carriage. By around 1830, Oxford University slang used it for a tutor who 'carried' a student through an exam, and by 1861 that sense had extended to athletic trainers.

Related words

The facts don't connect coach to any other English cognate beyond its own borrowed path through German and Hungarian.

More words

From German

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