truck

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A large road vehicle for carrying heavy goods.

   We rented a truck big enough to carry the whole load in one trip.

2. 2
   verb

   To carry goods somewhere by truck.

   They truck fresh vegetables across the mountains every night.

3. 3
   noun

   A small cart on wheels for moving heavy things by hand, such as luggage or boxes.

   The porter loaded our bags onto a truck and wheeled them to the lobby.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Truck in the vehicle sense originally meant “wheel” or “pulley” and may be a shortening of truckle, from Latin trochlea, “pulley wheel.” The unrelated truck in “have no truck with,” referring to dealings or exchange, comes from French troquer, “to barter.” The US slang verb meaning “move or proceed” dates from the 1920s.

From Middle English truken, troken, trukien, from Old English trucian (“to fail, run short, deceive, disappoint”), from Proto-West Germanic *trokōn (“to fail, miss, lack”), from Proto-Indo-European *derew-, *derwu- (“to tear, wrap, reap”), from Proto-Indo-European *der- (“to flay, split”). Cognate with Middle Low German troggelen (“to cheat, deceive, swindle”), Dutch troggelen (“to extort”), German dialectal truggeln (“to flatter, fawn”).

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary