Origins
The word 'wagon' entered English in the 1520s from Dutch 'wagen' (wagon, cart, carriage), replacing βββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββin many contexts the native English form 'wain' (from Old English 'wΓ¦gn,' from the same Proto-Germanic source). Both 'wagon' and 'wain' descend from Proto-Germanic *wagnaz (wagon, vehicle), from PIE *woΗ΅Κ°-no- (vehicle, wagon), a nominal derivative of *weΗ΅Κ°- (to carry, to transport, to move in a vehicle). This PIE root is one of the most prolific in the vocabulary of Indo-European languages.
The root *weΗ΅Κ°- produced an extraordinary range of descendants. In Latin: 'vehere' (to carry, to convey), 'vehiculum' (vehicle), 'via' (road, way β originally the route along which things are carried), 'vectΕ«ra' (a carrying, transport β whence English 'vector'), and 'invehΔ«' (to carry oneself against β whence 'inveigh'). In English, through various channels: 'way' (from Old English 'weg,' from Proto-Germanic *wegaz, from *weΗ΅Κ°-), 'weigh' (originally to carry, to move), 'vehicle,' 'convey' (from Old French 'conveier,' from Vulgar Latin *conviΔre), 'voyage,' and 'vex' (from Latin 'vexΔre,' to shake, to agitate β originally to carry roughly). Sanskrit contributed 'vΓ‘hana' (vehicle, that which carries β the origin of the English term for the animal or object a Hindu deity rides).
The fact that English has both 'wain' and 'wagon' makes them a doublet β two words in the same language derived from the same ultimate source but entering through different channels. 'Wain' is the native English inheritance, descending directly from Old English 'wΓ¦gn' through normal sound changes. 'Wagon' is a re-borrowing from Dutch, entering during the sixteenth century when Dutch commercial and military influence on English was strong. The Dutch form preserved the consonant cluster '-g-n' that had weakened in the English line of descent.
Word Formation
'Wain' survives in English primarily in the compound 'Charles's Wain,' the traditional English name for the constellation known in America as the Big Dipper and in Britain as the Plough. 'Charles's Wain' means 'the churl's (peasant's) wagon' β originally 'Carl's Wain,' referring to a farmer's cart traced in the stars. The name was later reinterpreted as referring to Charlemagne, but the original sense was simply 'the common man's wagon.'
The German compound 'Volkswagen' (literally 'people's wagon' or 'people's car') was coined in the 1930s for a car intended to be affordable to ordinary German citizens. It preserves the Proto-Germanic word in its modern German form 'Wagen,' which in contemporary German means both 'wagon' and 'car.' The same semantic extension occurred in Dutch, where 'wagen' can mean 'car,' and in the Scandinavian languages, where Swedish 'vagn' and Danish 'vogn' have also expanded to cover modern vehicles.
The PIE root *weΗ΅Κ°- is significant in the study of Indo-European culture because the existence of a Proto-Indo-European word for a wheeled vehicle implies that the PIE-speaking peoples had wheeled transport. Combined with archaeological evidence of the earliest wheeled vehicles dating to roughly 3500β3300 BCE in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, this linguistic evidence supports the dating and location of the PIE homeland.