trucks
- 1Plural of truck.
Heavy trucks rumbled past the house all through the night.
The company added ten new delivery trucks to its fleet.
Note
The plural carries every sense of the singular, and those senses split by region. In American, Canadian and Australian English, trucks are heavy goods vehicles on the road; in British usage the word also names railroad cars built for freight. Older senses survive too: the small wheels of a gun carriage, the ball atop a flagpole. The spelling doubles as the verb form: in the trucks arrived it is the noun, in she trucks lumber the verb.
- 2Third-person singular simple present of truck.
The mill trucks its lumber down to the harbor twice a week.
He trucks fresh fish inland to the city restaurants.
Note
One spelling covers a wide spread of verbs. Used with an object, it means hauling something by truck (the mill trucks its lumber). Used without one, it can mean driving a truck or, in film work, moving the camera alongside a moving subject. North American slang adds traveling on and persisting through difficulty. To tell it apart from the noun, see the plural noun.
- 3The wheeled assembly mounted under a railroad car or locomotive, supporting its weight and letting it roll and swivel along the rails.
Engineers inspected the trucks beneath each car for cracked springs.
The new trucks gave the locomotive a smoother ride through tight curves.
Similarbogies
Note
A railroad usage that can catch readers out: here trucks are not the cars themselves but the wheeled frames beneath them. British readers may expect the freight-car meaning of the everyday plural, but in this sense a car rides on its trucks. The usage stays close to the word's meaning of a small wheel or roller, the same idea behind the wheels of a gun carriage.
- 4An outdoor game resembling billiards but played on a grass lawn instead of a table.
Guests at the manor spent the afternoon at trucks on the south lawn.
He was unbeaten at trucks among the village players.
Less common meaning
- 5Trousers, the garment worn from the waist to the ankles with a separate part for each leg.
The lad rolled up his trucks before wading into the stream.
His Sunday trucks were pressed and laid out on the bed.
Note
Old British slang for trousers, now archaic. Sydney Watson's Wops, the Waif (1928) gives it to a London street boy, who complains that the trucks "is that awful big up the legs." The singular verb belongs to his dialect, not to standard grammar. Use the word only to color period dialogue; anywhere else, say trousers.
Showing meanings only.
trucks is a form of truck
truck, noun: A heavy motor vehicle designed to carry goods, or to pull a semi-trailer that carries goods. Full entry
- Forms
- trucktrucks plural
- Spelling
- truck → trucks: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /s/.
Practice
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