The Etymology of Depot
Depot is a recent borrowing from French, entering English around 1795 in military contexts during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. French dépôt is from Latin depositum, the past participle of deponere — to put down, to set aside — built from de- (down, off) plus ponere (to place, to put). A depot, in its original sense, is simply a place where things are put down for safekeeping. In late 18th-century French and English military usage, a depot was a fortified storehouse holding arms, ammunition, supplies, and recruits — and the British and French armies of the period were full of them. From the military sense it broadened in the 19th century to any storage facility (a fuel depot, a tram depot) and, especially in American English, to a railway station, where trains and goods were collected and dispatched. American railroad depots are still called depots in regions where British English would say station. The Latin verb ponere has been one of the most productive in English: deposit, deposition, depose, expose, impose, suppose, propose, position, compose, posit are all built on it.