currus

Currus, currus is masculine and fourth declension, from curro, "to run" - the thing that runs. The fourth declension's standing joke applies: currus is the nominative singular, the genitive singular and the nominative plural all at once, so only the sentence around it will tell you which. Dative and ablative plural are curribus, and the ablative singular is a bare curru.

In classical writing it is the war chariot and, above all, the triumphal car a victorious general rode through Rome. Medieval Latin loosens it to any cart or wagon. The trap is carrus, a separate word borrowed from Gaulish for a four-wheeled baggage wagon, which is the one that actually gave French char and English car, cargo, carry and carriage. Currus itself survives in "concourse", "cursor" and "current" only through its verb.