Chaise

A chaise (/ʃeɪz/ shayz), sometimes called shay, is a light two-wheeled carriage for one or two people. It may also have a folding hood. The coachmaker William Felton (1796) considered chaises to be a family of vehicles which included all two-wheel one-horse vehicles such as gigs and whiskies. A similar carriage pulled by two-horses is identified as a curricle. The name, in use in England before 1700, came from the French word chaise, meaning chair. The spelling shay is a colloquial variant of chaise, particularly in North America. A variant chay is slang and sometimes refers to other types of vehicle. The chaise is a two-wheeled carriage pulled by a single horse, usually with a chair-backed seat suitable for one or two persons. Felton writes that it is the finished look which dictates which type of chaise they are, but their construction is one of only two types: "the one, a chair-back body for gig or curricle, which hangs by braces—the other, a simple half-pannel whiskey, which fixes on the shafts". A light chaise having two seats is a double chair.