Also 3–6 cartare, 4 karter, 5 cartere, 6–8 cartar. [f. CART sb. + -ER1. (Littré and Cotgr. have F. chartier in this sense in 16–17th c.)]
† 1. The driver of a chariot; a charioteer. Obs.
a. 1300. Cursor M., 21287. Þe carter self is iesus crist.
c. 1374. Chaucer, Boeth., V. iv. 163. As men seen þe karter worken in þe tournynge … of hys kartes or chariottes.
1513. Douglas, Æneis, XII. viii. 60. Metiscus the cartar, That Turnus chayr had for to rewle on hand.
1551. Recorde, Cast. Knowl. (1556), 264. This constellation is also named Auriga the Cartar.
1580. Baret, Alv., C 150. A chariot man, a carter.
2. One who drives a cart.
a. 1250. Owl & Night., 1184. Drah to the cwaþ þe cartare.
1463. Mann. & Househ. Exp., 226. The carteris that browt hame the sayd yryn.
1549. Olde, Erasm. Par. Ephes., Prol. C ij. As vnmete for this … as a carter of husbandry to be a caruer at a noble mans table.
1697. Dampier, Voy. (1729), I. 432. A piece of Buffaloe-hide, shaped like our Carters Frocks.
1840. Hood, Up the Rhine, 194. The carters drive along the streets smacking a tune with their whips.
b. As a type of low birth or breeding; a rude, uncultured man, a clown. (Common in 16th c.)
1509. Barclay, Ship of Fooles, Pref. Why are they [poets] dyspysed of many rude carters of nowe a dayes whiche vnderstonde nat them?
1581. J. Bell, Haddon’s Answ. Osor., 3 b. There is no Carter but knoweth it.
1589. Puttenham, Eng. Poesie, I. xx. (Arb.), 57. Continence in a king is of greater merit, then in a carter.
1848. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., iii. (1849), I. 322. A man with the deportment, the vocabulary, and the accent of a carter.
† 3. ? Some kind of missile. Obs.
1751. Smollett, Per. Pic. (1779), I. ii. 8. Heaving … round and doubleheaded partridges, crows, and carters.
4. More fully Carter-fish: a kind of flat-fish (Pleuronectes megastoma), otherwise called WHIFF.
1884. St. James’s Gaz., 18 Jan., 6/1. The carter, [etc.] … belong to that strange family of fish.
