The term carcais (‘quiver’) occurs in the occitan poetry five times, always in rhyme position. only in one of these five cases, namely in Raimbaut de Vaqueiras’ Carros (Truan mala guerra, BdT 392.32), it has its literal meaning of ‘quiver’, while in the other four occurrences it has apparently a metaphoric sense, which has generally been considered problematic by the scholars. This paper attempts to provide an interpretation of all the occurrences of the term, focusing in particular on that in the fictive tenso by Bertran carbonel Rocin, cen ves m’aves faih penedir (BdT 82.13), a passage dubbed as «désesperé» by Gianfranco contini.