Transport (meaning)

The word transport can be either a verb or a noun. (See transport (pronunciation) for a significant difference.) Its basic meaning is 'to carry [verb], or carrying [noun], from one place to another', "now mostly restricted to the conveyance of persons, animals, and things as an organized operation" (OED). Some more restricted meanings may be of use to students.

• 'A transport' (count noun) was sometimes a particular vehicle, most usually a ship, used for carrying troops or their supplies. It was later used for a vessel carrying convicts, and later still a heavy aircraft used to supply troops.
  • From this, an army's transport became the name of the whole logistical 'train' of an army, by which men, equipment and ammunition, etc, are conveyed to their proper uses on the battlefield. The British Army had a Royal Corps of Transport from 1965 to 1993, when it was replaced by the Royal Logistic Corps.
    • This was later applied to the civilian systems by which people and goods travel.
  • It is more usual to describe road vehicles in general as 'means of transport', and any one conveyance as 'a means of transport'.
• Thus the non-count noun transport (preferable to the more old-fashioned transportation, which has another sense in British history, and is currently the preferred word in American English) covers the whole business of moving goods and people over some distance, by means of machines: in the UK there has been a Government 'Department of Transport' since 2002, previously the 'Ministry of Transport'; and it deals with such sectors as 'road transport', 'rail transport' and 'air transport'. The word is often used epithetically to label particular examples: 'the transport industry', for example, or a 'transport strategy'.
• Figuratively," (app[arently] the earliest use)" according to OED), 'a transport' is an emotional state beyond the usual, or 'ecstasy': a condition in which a person experiences extremes of an emotion, such as 'transports of rage', 'a transport of affection' and 'transports of joy', etc. This is most commonly used in the plural form, transports. Jane Austen talks in Pride and Prejudice of "the first transports of rage", and it was once a cliche of romantic writing to talk of "the transports of delight". One can be transported by music, or any sort of art: "It takes me out of myself" is a more colloquial rendering of the same idea.
  • • The punning title of a song about a London bus, by Flanders and Swann, is "A Transport of Delight" (available on line at http://www.nyanko.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/fas/hat_trans.html).
• In the history of the British Empire until 1868, transportation was a sentence of the courts involving banishment and hard labour in the cause of developing the colonies. Convicts who had been sentenced to death could have their sentences commuted to "being transported for life", originally to North America (until United States Independence) and later to Australia. Lesser crimes might attract a sentence of a fixed term of years. Those transported lived in 'penal colonies', and laboured on such public works as road-building, and could be hired out to private citizens, to work on establishing farms and so on. See also transportation (meaning), and an article about the distinction between transport and transportation at transport - transportation

For a note about the etymological pattern into which transport falls, see -port- (etymology).