coach

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A person who trains people in a sport or skill.

   The football coach praised the team after the match.

2. 2
   verb

   To train or teach someone, especially in a sport or skill.

   She coached the swimming team for ten years.

3. 3
   noun

   A comfortable bus used for long journeys.

   We took a coach from London to Edinburgh.

4. 4
   noun

   The cheaper standard section of a plane or train.

   We couldn't afford business class, so we flew coach.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Coach entered English in the mid-16th century through French coche, from Hungarian kocsi szekér, “wagon from Kocs,” a Hungarian town renowned for making carriages and wagons. It first denoted a horse-drawn carriage and was later extended to railway carriages and single-decker buses. Its use for a tutor, and later a sports trainer, rests on the idea that a tutor carries or drives a student through an examination.

Borrowed from Middle French coche, from German Kutsche, from Hungarian kocsi. According to historians, the coach was named after the small Hungarian town of Kocs, which made a livelihood from cart building and transport between Vienna and Budapest. The meaning “instructor/trainer” is from Oxford University slang (c. 1830) for a “tutor” who “carries” one through an exam; the athletic sense is from 1861.

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary