supracargo

Meanings

1. An officer on board a merchant ship who is in charge of the cargo and its sale; also, if there are two of such officers, the senior one, the other being the subcargo.
2. An agent or representative of a company in charge of its overseas business.

Etymology

From English supra- (prefix meaning ‘above, over’) + borrowed from Italian sopracargo, a dialectal form of sopraccarico, from sopra- (prefix meaning ‘above, over’) + carico (“cargo”) (from caricare (“to load; to take aboard”), from Late Latin carricāre, the present active infinitive of carricō (“to load”), from Latin carrus (“cart, wagon; cartload”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱers- (“to run”)) + -icō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs)).