Category:Chaises

A term applied to various pleasure or travelling carriages, the exact application having varied from time to time (source OED):

a. A light open carriage for one or two persons, often having a top or calash; those with four wheels resembling the phaeton, those with two the curricle; also loosely used for pleasure carts and light carriages generally.

Also: ‘A chaise and pair; a chaise and four: the term of later days for a light vehicle, with four wheels, drawn by two or four horses’.

b. A carriage for travelling, having a closed body and seated for one to three persons, the driver sitting on one of the horses; more distinctively called a post-chaise (source Oxford English Dictionary)

• Etymology: < modern French chaise (chaize Cotgrave), a phonetic alteration of chaire, established in the ordinary sense ‘chair’, whence by extension ‘sedan-chair’, and by transference a wheeled vehicle for travelling in. In this later sense alone chaise passed into English.(source Oxford English Dictionary)