porte cochère

Meanings

1. A gateway through which horse carriages pass, often into a courtyard.
2. A porch, or roof without walls over a driveway, next to the entrance of a building which a vehicle can stop in or under to allow passengers to embark or disembark without being affected by bad weather.

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from French porte cochère (literally “coach gateway”): porte (“door; gateway”) (ultimately from Latin porta (“door; entrance; gate; passage”), from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“to go through; to carry forth, fare”)) + cochère (from coche (“stagecoach”) + -ière (feminine form of -ier (suffix forming the names of occupations, etc.)). Coche is ultimately from Hungarian kocsi (“cart; horse carriage”), from Kocs, a village in Hungary known for making carriages.