landau

plural landaus

1. A type of lightweight, four-wheeled carriage in which the front and back passenger seats face each other.

   On an early winter afternoon, clear but not cold, when the vegetable world was a weird multitude of skeletons through whose ribs the sun shone freely, a gleaming landau came to a pause on the crest of a hill in Wessex.

   1882, Thomas Hardy, chapter I, in Two on a Tower. A Romance. [...] In Three Volumes, volume I, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, […], →OCLC, page 1

   2 more examples

   Indeed, as the two gentlemen reached the door, a landau drove up, a magnificent yellow carriage, lined with brocade or satin of a faint cream colour, drawn by wonderful grey horses, with flaming ribbons, and harness blazing all over with crests: no less than three of these heraldic emblems surmounted the coats-of-arms on the panels, and these shields contained a prodigious number of quarterings, betokening the antiquity and splendour of the house of Clavering and Snell.

   1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 37, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC

   Away they went, and I was just wondering whether I should not do well to follow them, when up the lane came a neat little landau, the coachman with his coat only half buttoned, and his tie under his ear, while all the tags of his harness were sticking out of the buckles.

   1891 June 25, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Adventure I.—A Scandal in Bohemia.”, in Geo[rge] Newnes, editor, The Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly, volume II, London: George Newnes, Limited, […], published July 1891, →OCLC, page 68, column 2

2. broadlyA style of automobile based around the design of landau carriages.

plural Landaus

1. A surname.