trunk
Pluraltrunks
Pluraltrunks
Formstrunks, trunking, trunked
- 1The main stem of a tree, typically single and roughly upright, rising from the roots to the branches.
Ivy had climbed the trunk almost to the first branches.
Some of the old redwoods had trunks wider than a car.
Similarbole
Note
Foresters and botanists also call it the bole, especially the clear stretch below the first branches. The picture of one main stem with lesser parts branching from it runs through many of the word's later uses, from roads to arteries.
- 2A storage compartment of a vehicle, especially the enclosed luggage space at the back of a car; also a lockable box mounted behind the seat of a motorcycle.
The trunk was too small for the stroller, so we strapped it to the roof.
He popped the trunk and pulled out two folding chairs for the game.
UsageFor a car, British English uses boot. Pop the trunk means open the trunk.
Similarboot
- 3The long, mobile, nose-like organ of an animal such as a sengi, a tapir or especially an elephant, used for sniffing, probing, grasping, feeding or drinking.
An elephant can pluck a single leaf with the tip of its trunk.
The tapir swung its short trunk from side to side, sniffing for fallen fruit.
Similarproboscis
Note
Zoologists call it a proboscis. An elephant's is the nose and upper lip joined into a single boneless, muscular organ, which is why the same trunk that breathes and smells can also drink, grasp and fight; the tapir's shorter one grasps only partly.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 6 facts
- An elephant's trunk is called a proboscis. en.wikipedia.org
- An elephant's trunk combines the nose and upper lip and is boneless and muscular. nationalzoo.si.edu
- An elephant uses its trunk for breathing, smelling, drinking and grasping. seaworld.org
- An elephant can use its trunk to fight. en.wikipedia.org
- A tapir has a comparatively short trunk. www2.geo.utexas.edu
- A tapir's trunk has limited grasping ability compared with an elephant's. link.springer.com
- 4A large chest or case for storing or transporting clothes and other belongings, usually with a hinged, often domed lid and a handle at each end.
Two porters carried the heavy steamer trunk up the gangway.
The trunk at the foot of the bed held spare blankets and quilts.
Similarchest
Note
A box was already among the meanings of Old French tronc, which could name a church's alms box, so the word reached English able to hold things. Travel by ship gave it compounds such as cabin trunk and steamer trunk; in George A. Birmingham's Gossamer, stewards carrying cabin trunks "swarm in the corridors" after the passengers have embarked.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 7 facts
- English trunk derives through Middle English from Old French tronc, which included the meaning alms box. en.wiktionary.org
- French tronc can designate a church collection box. fr.wikipedia.org
- The compound cabin trunk is connected with accommodation aboard steamships. en.wikipedia.org
- The name steamer trunk comes from its use aboard steamships. victoriancollections.net.au
- Gossamer is by George A. Birmingham. en.wikisource.org
- The novel's narrator describes stewards carrying cabin trunks with the exact words quoted. en.wikisource.org
- The scene occurs after the passengers have embarked, before the ship departs. en.wikisource.org
- 5The torso, the main part of the body apart from the head and limbs, especially in a human.
Yoga poses that rotate the trunk can ease stiffness in the lower back.
The marble statue showed only the trunk of a man, without head or limbs.
Similartorso
Note
Old French tronc could already mean a headless body, and in anatomy the trunk is still everything but the head, neck and limbs: chest, abdomen and pelvis, together with the back. Fitness writing calls the muscles that hold it upright the trunk muscles or the core, and exercises that twist it are trunk rotations.
- 6Short for swimming trunks: men's shorts worn for swimming, usually called trunks.
The lifeguard wore red trunks and kept a whistle around his neck.
She bought her son new trunks before the family beach trip.
UsageSay a pair of trunks and my trunks are wet, even for one garment.
- 7The main line or body of a branching system, as distinct from its branches, such as a main river channel, canal, railroad or highway, or the main stem of a blood vessel or nerve.
Feeder canals carried coal to the trunk, where larger barges took it east.
Engineers rerouted the railroad's trunk around the flooded valley but left the branch lines untouched.
UsageOften before another noun: trunk road, trunk line, trunk route.
Note
Its natural partners are branch and feeder: feeder routes and branch lines bring traffic to the trunk, which carries the heaviest share of it.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- The trunk generally carries the greatest volume of traffic. psrc.org
- 8In telephony, a circuit linking two switchboards or exchanges that is shared by many calls rather than assigned to one subscriber.
A cut cable knocked out the trunk between the two exchanges, silencing phones across the county.
The office phone system reaches the carrier over a handful of digital trunks.
Note
A trunk runs between exchanges or switches and carries calls for many subscribers in turn, while each subscriber's own line connects that subscriber to an exchange. When every trunk on a route is busy, a new call cannot use that route immediately, so carriers size their trunks for peak traffic rather than for an average day.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- A trunk connects exchanges or switches. itu.int
- An individual basic trunk circuit carries one call at a time and serves different subscribers in turn. A trunk group can carry multiple calls simultaneously. digital.gov
- Several telephones can share a subscriber's line. cdn-media.vtechphones.com
- The call cannot immediately use that route, but it may be rerouted or queued. cisco.com
- Trunk capacity is planned around busy periods rather than average daily traffic. cisco.com
- 9In source control, the main line of a project's code holding the latest changes, from which the newest unstable builds, or trunk builds, are made.
Developers commit small changes directly to trunk several times a day.
The feature lived on a branch for months before it was merged back into the trunk.
UsageOften with no article: commit to trunk, merge into trunk.
Similarmainline
Note
The picture comes from the tree: other work grows on branches and is merged back, and trunk-based development keeps those branches short-lived or does without them.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- The source-control image of a trunk and branches comes from a tree. debian.org
- Work developed on branches can be merged back into the trunk. svnbook.red-bean.com
- Trunk-based development uses short-lived development branches. dora.dev
- Trunk-based development can dispense with separate development branches through direct commits to the trunk. trunkbaseddevelopment.com
Less common meanings
- 10To give many users network access at the same time by having them share a common set of circuits, carriers, channels, or frequencies.
Rather than give each department its own frequency, the county decided to trunk all of its public-safety radio traffic.
Trunking lets a small pool of channels serve thousands of handheld radios.
Note
The idea rests on the fact that not every user talks at once. A trunked radio or phone system keeps a pool of channels and hands one to each caller only for the length of a call or transmission, then returns it to the pool, so a few circuits can serve far more users than dedicated lines could.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Trunking exploits the fact that users do not all need channels simultaneously. apps.usfa.fema.gov
- A trunked system allocates channels from a shared pool for calls and releases them afterward. bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com
- Sharing channels lets a limited set of circuits serve more users than dedicated allocation would. portal.cops.usdoj.gov
- 11A long tube through which pellets of clay, peas, and the like are blown with the breath; a peashooter.
He shot Sugar Plums at them out of a Trunk.
1655, James Howell, “To the Lord Viscount Col. from Madrid”Note
Older writing used the word for a blowpipe: in one of James Howell's letters from Madrid, someone "shot Sugar Plums at them out of a Trunk." It belongs with the word's pipe and channel meanings, such as a long conveying pipe, but the toy is now a peashooter, and this sense survives only in older texts.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Older writing used trunk for a blowpipe or peashooter. en.wiktionary.org
- The passage occurs in a letter by James Howell written from Madrid. archive.org
- Howell's letter contains the quoted wording about shooting sugar plums from a trunk. en.wiktionary.org
- The blowpipe sense belongs with trunk's pipe and channel meanings, including a conveying pipe. en.wiktionary.org
- 12To cut off part of something, or to shorten or truncate it.
Large streames of bloud out of the truncked stocke / Forth gushed, like fresh water streame from riuen rocke.
1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie QueeneNote
The obsolete verb stays closest to the Latin idea of cutting off, and its living relative is truncate, which took over the job. Spenser describes blood gushing "out of the truncked stocke"; a present-day writer would say lopped, cut off or truncated.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- The cutting-off meaning corresponds to the meaning of the word's Latin ancestor. en.wiktionary.org
- Truncate is etymologically related to trunk. en.wiktionary.org
- Spenser describes blood gushing using the exact phrase 'out of the truncked stocke'. gutenberg.org
- 13A large pipe, chute or boxlike conduit, typically made of planks or metal plates, for conveying air, water, grain and the like; on a ship, a shaft, often watertight, connecting two or more decks.
- 14In architecture, the shaft-like middle section of a pilaster, running from its base up to its capital.
- 15A large pipe serving as the piston rod of a steam engine, wide enough for the connecting rod to run from the crank straight to the piston inside it, making the engine more compact.
- 16A flume or sluice used to separate ores from the slimes in which they are contained.
- 17To extract ores from the slimes that contain them by running them through a trunk.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
Latin truncus ("cut off, maimed") gave the noun truncus ("a stock, lopped tree trunk"), which became Old French tronc, which could mean "tree trunk," "alms box," or "headless body," and then Middle English tronke. Truncate is related, and truncus and tronk are doublets.