Editing Caboose (section)

==Etymology==
[[File:Grand trunk western caboose.JPG|thumb|left|A retired wooden [[Grand Trunk Western Railroad]] caboose]]

Railroad historian David L. Joslyn (a retired [[Southern Pacific Railroad]] draftsman) has traced the possible root of "caboose" to the obsolete [[Middle Low German]] word ''Kabuse'', a small cabin erected on a sailing ship's main deck.<ref>{{cite journal |title=The last car is changing |journal=Info |date=February 1979 |publisher=Union Pacific |page=15 |url=https://utahrails.net/pdf/The-Last-Car-Is-Changing_UP-INFO_Feb-1979.pdf |via=Utah Rails}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=The wood shanty disappears |journal=Southern Pacific Bulletin |volume=46 |number=1 |date=January 1962 |publisher=Southern Pacific |page=24 |url=https://archive.org/details/cscrm_002369/page/n11/mode/2up}}</ref> This was absorbed into [[Middle Dutch]] and entered the [[Dutch language]] ''circa'' 1747 as ''kabhuis'', the compartment on a ship's main deck in which meals were prepared.<ref name="MW"/><!-- This ref only supports the word kabuis not Joslyn or the prehistory --> In modern Dutch, ''kombuis'' is equivalent to  ''galley''.

Eighteenth century [[France|French]] naval records also make reference to a ''cambose'' or ''camboose'', which described both the food preparation cabin on a ship's main deck and its [[stove]]. Camboose may have entered English through American sailors who had come into contact with their French allies during the [[American Revolutionary War|American Revolution]].  It was already in use in U.S. naval terminology by the 1797 construction of the [[USS Constitution|USS ''Constitution'']], whose wood-burning food preparation stove is known as the ''camboose.''<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ussconstitution.navy.mil/camboose.html |title=Camboose Stove|publisher=US Navy  |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070216040000/http://www.ussconstitution.navy.mil/camboose.html |archive-date=2007-02-16}}</ref> In modern French, ''cambuse'' can refer both to a ship's storeroom and to the North-American railcar.

Camboose as a cook shack was in use in English at least by 1805, when it was used in a New York ''Chronicle'' article cited in the ''New English Dictionary'' describing a [[New England]] shipwreck, which reported that "[Survivor] William Duncan drifted aboard the canboose {{sic}}."<ref name=Highball /> As the first railroad cabooses were wooden shanties erected on flat cars as early as the 1830s,<ref>{{cite web| author=Union Pacific Railroad| url=http://www.uprr.com/aboutup/history/caboose/caboo01.shtml| title=The Caboose's Early Uses| access-date=2005-01-30| archive-date=2012-08-18| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120818030637/http://www.uprr.com/aboutup/history/caboose/caboo01.shtml| url-status=dead}}</ref> they would have resembled the cook shack on a ship's deck.

The earliest known printed record of "caboose" used to describe the railcar appeared in 1859 in court records in conjunction with a lawsuit filed against the [[New York and Harlem Railway]].<ref name=Highball>{{cite book| title=Highball! A Pageant of Trains| author=Beebe, Lucius| pages=207–223| year=1945 }}</ref>

The most common pluralization of caboose is "cabooses".<ref name="MW">{{Cite web |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/caboose |title=Definition of CABOOSE |website=Merriam-Webster.com Online Dictionary |language=en |access-date=2019-07-02}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/caboose |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190702065629/https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/caboose |url-status=dead |archive-date=July 2, 2019 |title=caboose |website=Lexico Dictionaries |access-date=2019-07-02}}</ref>