tram
noun
a conveyance that transports passengers or freight in carriers suspended from cables and supported by a series of towers
a four-wheeled wagon that runs on tracks in a mine
- “a tramcar carries coal out of a coal mine”
a wheeled vehicle that runs on rails and is propelled by electricity
- “tram”
- “tramcar”
Origin
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 rail vehicle derives from tram-way, in its earliest sense meaning literally a log-covered road, but later applied to the earliest wooden railways, used for transporting coal in carts which came to be called "trams".
Phrases
- aerial tram
- man on the Bondi tram
- man on the Shau Kei Wan tram
- shoot through like a Bondi tram
- tram driver
- Tram Inn
- tram line
- tram locomotive
Related words
Word family
Broader terms
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Parts
WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.