tram
Meanings
- A passenger vehicle for public use that runs on tracks in the road (called a streetcar or trolley in North America).
- A similar vehicle for carrying materials.
- A people mover.
- An aerial cable car.
- A train with wheels that runs on a road; a trackless train.
- A car on a horse railway or tramway (horse trams preceded electric trams).
- The shaft of a cart.
- One of the rails of a tramway.
- To operate, or conduct the business of, a tramway.
- To travel by tram.
- To transport (material) by tram.
- To align a component in mechanical engineering or metalworking, particularly the spindle of a mill or drill press, as historically accomplished using a trammel.
- A silk thread formed of two or more threads twisted together, used especially for the weft, or cross threads, of the best quality of velvets and silk goods.
- To weave in this manner.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
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".