tram

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A public passenger vehicle that runs on rails set into the road, usually powered by electricity (called a streetcar or trolley in North America).

   We took the tram into the city centre to avoid the traffic.

Simplified etymology

Tram was borrowed from Dutch in the early 16th century, originally as a word for a shaft or beam. It was applied first to cart shafts and then to barrow-like vehicles used in coal mines. In the early 19th century it came to denote the parallel tracks used in mines and subsequently the public passenger vehicle running on such tracks.

Early 16th century, borrowed from Scots, probably from Low German traam (“tram, shaft of a barrow”), from Middle Low German and Middle Dutch trame (“narrow shaft, beam”), said to be ultimately from a lost West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) word, probably from Proto-Germanic *drum (“splinter, fragment”), from Proto-Indo-European *térmn̥ (“peg, post, boundary”), cognate with Latin terminus. Compare Middle Low German treme; West Flemish traam, trame. The popular derivation from the surname of the English pioneer tramway builder Benjamin Outram (1764–1805) is false: the term pre-dated him. The sense of a…

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