caboose

• camboose, cambouse

From French cambuse, from Middle Dutch kabuys, kabuis (Modern Dutch kombuis (“galley; kitchen”)). Cognate with Swedish kabyss.

• IPA^(key): /kəˈbuːs/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːs

caboose (plural cabooses)

1. (obsolete, nautical) A small galley or cookhouse on the deck of a small vessel.
2. (historical, nautical) A small sand-filled container used as an oven on board ship.
   • 1821, Owen Chase, Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex …:

     On the second day out, while sailing moderately on our course in the Gulf Stream, a sudden squall of wind struck the ship from the SW. and knocked her completely on her beam-ends, stove one of our boats, entirely destroyed two others, and threw down the cambouse.

   • 1841, Journal of the Franklin Institute, page 113:

     This stove is to be made in the form of a Franklin, but is to be furnished with an oven, and other means of cooking; its appearance is therefore more like that of the old fashioned caboose, than of a Franklin stove.

   • 1881, Eliza Davies, The Story of an Earnest Life, page 226:

     A tremendous billow, fringed with foam, swept over our deck, carrying the cook's caboose, cooking utensils and stove right overboard into the sea.

   • 2002, Don Philpott, Cayman Islands:

     The kitchens were kept separate because cooking was done in a caboose, a wooden box filled with sand and heated by a wood fire.

3. (US, rail transport) The last car on a freight train, having cooking and sleeping facilities for the crew; a guard’s van.

   Synonym: (obsolete) guard's van

4. (slang, childish, euphemistic) The buttocks.
5. (slang, sports) The person or team in last place.
6. (informal, often in combination) A youngest child who is born after a long gap in time.
   • 1987, Harriet Wallace Rose, Something's Wrong with My Child!:

     Jimmy was seven and had just finished first grade, so that made Nancy our caboose baby — our bonus child — our swan song.

   • 1987, Growing Child Research Review - Volumes 5-7:

     "Caboose" children, the late-born last offspring in the family, didn't suffer from this as much.

   • 2007, Beth K. Vogt, Baby Changes Everything, page 145:

     After looking back on her own experience, she thought of some ways parents could help ease the transition for their caboose kid.