billy cart

English

Alternative forms

• billy-cart

Etymology

From billy (“male goat”) + cart, referring to the former practice of hitching a cart behind a large goat.

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

billy cart (plural billy carts)

1. (UK, Australia) A rudimentary child's cart; a soapbox car.
   • 1954 December, Rotary Reporter: Brief Items on Club Activities around the World, The Rotarian, page 38,

     Whether you call them billy carts or soap-box racers, they're one and the same: homemade, four-wheeled, motorless racers that depend on a downhill course for their speed. […] In Coffs Harbour, Australia, for example, the Rotary Club recently held its third annual Billy Cart Derby for cars in two divisions: homemade racers and special championship cars.

   • 2004, Jack Brabham, Doug Nye, The Jack Brabham Story, page 19:

     It was in the billy cart, I suppose, that I had my first-ever races.

   • 2006, Alan Greenhalgh, Gathers No Moss‎^[1], page 20:

     A few wheels and a crate to make a billy cart would probably be acceptable, or the odd old alarm clock, but nothing more.

   • 2007, Ruby Langford Ginibi, Don't Take Your Love to Town‎^[2], page 98:

     The kids wanted a hole put in a piece of piping to make an axle for a billy-cart, but we had no drill, so Mac stood the steel pipe up against a gum tree, up with the rifle and shot a hole clean through it. The kids were delighted - they put a bolt through and screwed the nut in place and they had a billy-cart.

See also

• go-cart