The Etymology of <i>Carrago</i>: Germanic or Latin?

This article looks at the current near consensus that the Latin carrago is a loan from Gothic, as Ammianus Marcellinus (31.7.1) asserts. Although Friedrich Kluge long ago put forward a possible Germanic etymology, carrago is probably not Gothic in origin. For a putative loan from Eastern Germanic, the term looks remarkably like a typical member of a family of common nouns in Latin based on the carrus- stem. Skepticism regarding Ammianus’ Gothic etymology is entirely reasonable. Both Greek and Roman writers sometimes erred when assigning foreign origins to Latin words. Moreover, it is possible that his identification of the word as Gothic was a deliberate fiction, intended for literary effect.