load

The word “load” means to put a quantity of goods, cargo, or material onto or into something for transport or storage. In plain terms, to put something onto/into a vehicle, weapon, or computer program — or, as a noun, the amount being carried.

“Load” is pronounced lohd (/loʊd/ in IPA).

Here is “load” used in a sentence: “They loaded the boxes onto the truck.”

Depending on how it is used, “load” can be a verb and a noun.

The word “load” comes from Old English. Originally from Old English lād, "way, course, journey" — the "burden" meaning branched off in Middle English by association with the unrelated verb "lade.".

“Load” is a fairly common word in modern English, usually learned at around the A2 level.

“Load” has 4 distinct senses listed in this dictionary. The most common is: to put a quantity of goods, cargo, or material onto or into something for transport or storage.

They are opposites. To load is to put goods, cargo, or material onto or into something for transport or storage, like loading boxes into a van. To unload is the reverse: taking that cargo back out and emptying the vehicle or container. You load at the start of a trip and unload at the end.

Everyday examples include loading groceries into the trunk of a car, loading pallets onto a truck with a forklift, and loading cargo containers onto a ship. On a smaller scale, you might load laundry into a washing machine or load logs onto a cart, filling it for transport or storage.

The direct opposite is unload, meaning to remove what was put on or in. Related words include empty, unpack, and offload. For instance, dockworkers load a ship in one port and unload it in another, and a delivery driver loads the van in the morning and offloads parcels all day.