Irish car

English

Noun

Irish car (plural Irish cars)

1. (now rare, historical) A two-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle in which passengers sit on a pair of benches. [from 17th c.]
   • 1792, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p. 188:

     Then we went, my Lord on horseback and the rest of us partly walking, partly on a most social machine, the Irish car, running upon two low, broad wheels, covered by a spacious platform rendered comfortable by carpeting fixed over it, and on the three sides not next the horse, boards to support the feet on.

   • 1908, Leonard Woolf, letter, 25 November:

     I got into an absurd Irish car […] & drove straight off.