trailer
Pluraltrailers
Verbtrailers, trailering, trailered
Pluraltrailers
Formstrailers, trailering, trailered
- 1A short promotional preview of a movie, video game, or TV show, made up of selected clips.
The studio released the first trailer for the sequel online last night.
Critics complained that the trailer gave away the film's biggest twist.
Note
A movie-industry word, chiefly American, with a backward-looking name. Previews were once shown after the main feature, trailing it, and the name stayed when they moved to the front of the program. The usual preposition is for, as in "the trailer for that movie." Preview and teaser are its near neighbors.
- 2An unpowered wheeled vehicle towed behind another to carry equipment or cargo that won't fit in the lead vehicle.
The contractor towed a flatbed trailer full of lumber to the site.
We strapped the furniture down on the trailer before the long drive.
Note
The workhorse sense, set apart from the trailer people live in because it carries cargo, not occupants. It is often named for its load, as in a boat trailer or a horse trailer. In trucking it is the rear half of a tractor-trailer: the tractor pulls, and sliding the trailer's tandem axles shifts the weight on the kingpin.
- 3A furnished vehicle towed behind another and lived in as a home while parked.
The family parked their trailer at the campground for two weeks.
She fixed up an old trailer into a cozy weekend home.
Note
In American English a trailer can be a place to live: furnished, towed to a campground or a national park, and lived in once it stops. Travel trailer is the fuller name that keeps it apart from the cargo-hauling trailer, and camper and caravan cover much the same ground. The towing is the point. Unlike the mobile home, this one is meant to keep moving.
- 4A prefabricated home that can be towed to a new site but is usually left permanently in an area zoned for manufactured housing.
He grew up in a trailer at the edge of the city.
The park rents lots to families who own their own trailers.
Note
Here the name outlives the habit. The home is built so that it can be towed, but it usually stays put for good on land set aside for such housing. Mobile home is the common alternative, and it carries the same mismatch between name and use. When the trailer being discussed is someone's house rather than a holiday vehicle, this is the American sense in play.
- 5A person or thing that trails along behind, following after something else.
The scout walked ahead while the trailer kept watch over the rear.
Among the geese, one straggler became the constant trailer of the flock.
Similarstraggler, laggard, follower
Oppositeleader
Note
The plain agent noun the whole family grows from: trail plus -er, one who or that which trails behind. Its liveliest use is the pursuer you try to lose. In Chris Ekpekurede's Laughing Over Serious Matters (2014), a driver turns suddenly without signaling, "hoping to shake off my trailer." Shake off is the natural verb when the trailer is someone following you.
- 6A portion of an object that extends some distance beyond its main body.
The comet showed a faint trailer of dust reaching across the sky.
A loose trailer of fabric hung well past the hem of the gown.
Similarextension, attachment, appendage, appendix
- 7To load something onto a trailer, or to carry it by trailer.
Owners often trailer their horses long distances to shows.
The crew will trailer the equipment to the next site tomorrow.
Note
The noun turned verb, made from the towed cargo vehicle. It takes an object and usually a destination, as in "trailer my old car to the wrecking yard." Its forms keep a single r: trailered, trailering. It suits loads that cannot move under their own power, like a car whose engine has died.
- 8The final part of a data packet, often containing a sequence used to check for errors.
The router verifies the trailer before accepting the frame.
A corrupted trailer causes the receiver to discard the entire packet.
Similarfooter
Oppositeheader
Note
Networking pairs it with header. One sits at the front of a packet, the other at the back, and the data travels between them. A trailer can be as small as two bytes, because its usual job is a check sequence that lets the receiver catch corruption. The same end-of-the-line logic named the final record of a data list.
- 9The final record in a list of data items, often marked with a key value that sorts last, signaling the end of the set.
The batch job recognized the trailer and closed the input file.
Each dataset ended with a trailer record carrying an invalid key.
Similarsentinel
Oppositeheader
Note
A data-processing marker that means "nothing comes after this." The record carries a key no real item could have, so it always sorts to the end. In a deck of punched cards it was the trailer card, and in software it survives as the trailer record, for instance at the end of a linked list. Programmers also call the same device a sentinel.
- 10A short blank length of film at the end of a reel, used to feed the film conveniently into a projector.
The editor spliced a fresh trailer onto the worn end of the reel.
Without a trailer, the final frames often got damaged during threading.
Oppositeleader
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from "trail" plus the suffix "-er". The film sense comes from the fact that previews were once shown after the main feature, rather than before it as is usual today.