A wagon is a wooden horse-drawn cart used to accommodate not only people, but also household items. Unlike the cart, there is a covered top covered with fabric. The very word “cab” came from the Arabic “cubatt”, which means “dome, tent”.
Flies my rattle rattles
One can imagine what a wagon is today, if only from old pictures or feature films dedicated to the life of nomadic peoples. Until recently, gypsies traveled on such carts. For long journeys, several people, usually members of the same family, could be accommodated in a wagon.
The frame was made of wooden gratings or arcs, sometimes the upper part of the cart was a wicker made of vines, over which a light canvas or dense felt was stretched, depending on the time of year. What is a wagon, the townspeople also learned with the advent of the Yamshchitsky service in Russia, since this word began to mean mail carriages.
It’s warm in winter and cool in summer
For nomadic Kalmyks, kibitka was called portable dwelling, having a quadrangular shape, covered with a nightmare, which was attached to the base with horsehair ropes. In the center on the earthen floor, a hearth was arranged for cooking and heating the premises in the winter cold. In the summer it was cool inside by maintaining a constant temperature according to the principle of a thermos.
It is easy to understand what a wagon is, imagining a wooden frame covered with two layers of felt with an air gap between them. Among the Central Asian peoples, such temporary buildings were called yurts. A little later, the term “wagon” began to be applied to permanent dwellings made of clay or raw brick, in which poor families huddled.
The wagon on the woman’s head
Young ladies in the XIX century could easily explain what a wagon is. Around 1880, women's hats came into fashion, which received the same name. Such a hat had a round bottom with wide, trimmed with lace and slightly bent upward fields. Usually the wagon was tied under satin or silk ribbons under the chin.
If you look in profile, the girl’s face was practically not visible behind the hat frame. The style of the headgear is indeed somewhat reminiscent of the shape of a nomadic wagon with a horse-driver looking out from under the canopy.