coach

—coachable, adj. —coachability, n.

/kohch/, n.

1. a large, horse-drawn, four-wheeled carriage, usually enclosed.

2. a public motorbus.

3. Railroads. See day coach.

4. Also called air coach. a class of airline travel providing less luxurious accommodations than first class at a lower fare.

5. a person who trains an athlete or a team of athletes: a football coach.

6. a private tutor who prepares a student for an examination.

7. a person who instructs an actor or singer.

8. Baseball. a playing or nonplaying member of the team at bat who is stationed in the box outside first or third base to signal instructions to and advise base runners and batters.

9. Naut. an after cabin in a sailing ship, located beneath the poop deck, for use esp. by the commander of the ship.

10. a type of inexpensive automobile with a boxlike, usually two-door, body manufactured in the 1920s.

11. See mobile home.

v.t.

12. to give instruction or advice to in the capacity of a coach; instruct: She has coached the present tennis champion.

v.i.

13. to act as a coach.

14. to go by or in a coach.

adv.

15. by coach or in coach-class accommodations: We flew coach from Denver to New York.

[1550-60; 1840-50 for sense "tutor"; earlier coche(e) < MF coche < G Kotsche, Kutsche < Hungarian kocsi, short for kocsi szekér cart of Kocs, town on the main road between Vienna and Budapest; senses referring to tutoring, from the conception of the tutor as one who carries the student through examinations]

Syn. 6. mentor, preceptor.

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Four-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage with an enclosed body and an elevated seat in front for the driver.

The coach originated in the 15th century in Hungary (where kocsi originally meant "wagon from the town of Kocs"). It was introduced in England in the mid-16th century. Coaches were used as public conveyances with inside seats for passengers (as in the stagecoach) and for mail delivery. They were used mainly in European cities into the 18th century, when the private carriage became more common.

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▪ horse-drawn vehicle

      four-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage, popularly thought to have originated in Hungary in the 15th century. The word coach often is used interchangeably with “carriage,” but a coach is generally either a public carriage—such as a stagecoach, Concord coach, mail coach, or the modern railway coach—or an opulent carriage of state. A coach has a suspended, enclosed body, with a roof forming part of its framing, and two inside transverse seats facing one another, for carrying four or six passengers.

      Various authorities date the introduction of the coach to England at 1555–80. In Germany coaches were numerous in the 16th century, and the Berlin coach, which was characterized by its two-perch running gear and thoroughbrace suspension, was introduced in about 1660. In Paris, in 1645, there were fiacre coaches or cabs for hire, although there had been private carriages in Paris as early as 1550. In 16th-century England, poets derogated coaches as ostentatious vehicles employed by wantons and rakes, and the Thames watermen (boatmen), whose living suffered, also complained bitterly of them.

      In colonial America, the few coaches of the late 17th century were used primarily by governors and only in such places as Boston and New York City, which had roads. Bostonians later attacked coaches as works of the devil, thereby unwittingly echoing the edict of the German noble, Julius of Brunswick, who, in an edict of 1588, had forbidden his vassals to ride in coaches.

▪ railroad vehicle

 railroad passenger car. In early railroad operation, passenger and freight cars were often intermixed, but that practice very soon gave way to running separate freight and passenger trains. The flexible gangway between coaches, introduced about 1880, made the entire train accessible to passengers and so made possible the introduction of the dining car and the club or lounge car. Early coaches were built of wood and usually heated with stoves, making them vulnerable to fire in case of accident; modern coaches are made of steel and heated electrically.

      Until recently the standard coach in Europe was divided into six- or eight-seat compartments, with a corridor extending along one side. These have now been largely replaced with coaches on the U.S. model, which have a centre-aisle arrangement, uncompartmented seats, and doors usually at each end of the car.

      Among specialized types of coaches, the dome car, developed in the United States in the 1950s, gives passengers a wide-range view from under a raised, glassed-in roof.

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