Word.ws English Dictionary

flatbed

/ˈflætˌbɛd/

flatbed noun: an open freight vehicle with no sides, designed to carry heavy or outsized loads. Also the clipping of flatbed trolley.

flatbed: an open freight vehicle with no sides, designed to carry heavy or outsized loads
Image: Nick Taylor, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

flatbed (plural flatbeds)

  1. An open freight vehicle with no sides, designed to carry heavy or outsized loads.
  2. A railway freight car with no sides; a flatcar.
    • The Rotrac E2 shunter was built by German manufacturer Zwiehoff and has been subject to a 14-month trial to prove it can replace diesel traction for moving flatbed wagons in and out of the depot.2021 December 29, “Network News: DRS acquires compact electric shunter”, in RAIL, number 947, page 14, photo caption
  3. A document scanner with a flat bed.

Adjective

flatbed (not comparable)

  1. Having a flat bed.
    • I can't scan the whole document quickly because I only have a flatbed scanner.
    • The accident left the contents of a flatbed trailer scattered across all three lanes.

Verb

flatbed (third-person singular simple present flatbeds, present participle flatbedding, simple past and past participle flatbedded)

  1. (transitive) To transport by flatbed.
    • Tatiana went from working the pulley that lifted the treadless tank and placed it on tread, to painting the red star on a finished tank ready to be flatbedded and put into production.2000, Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman, →ISBN
    • 'Well, we won't know about prints till we can flatbed his SUV back to Middle Street and check, but given he left the car in a hurry, my guess is we'll find something, maybe quite a lot.2011 -, James Hayman, The Cutting, →ISBN

Also used as

flatbed is also the clipping of flatbed trolley.

Forms of flatbed

Noun
pluralflatbeds
alternative formflat bed
alternative formflat-bed
Verb
third-person singular presentflatbeds
present participleflatbedding
past participleflatbedded
pastflatbedded

Plural of flatbed: flatbeds

Origin of flatbed

From flat + bed.

Words formed from flatbed

Phrases with flatbed

Questions about flatbed

What does flatbed mean?
Flatbed means an open freight vehicle with no sides, designed to carry heavy or outsized loads.
What part of speech is flatbed?
Flatbed can be a noun, an adjective or a verb.
How do you pronounce flatbed?
Flatbed is pronounced /ˈflætˌbɛd/ (US).
What is the plural of flatbed?
The plural of flatbed is flatbeds.

Words near flatbed in the dictionary

  1. flatback
  2. flatbacker
  3. flatbackers
  4. flatbacks
  5. flatband
  6. flatbed
  7. flatbed editor
  8. flatbed editors
  9. flatbed lorries
  10. flatbed lorry
  11. flatbed trolley

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flatbed (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-flatbed.wav.

Cite this entry: “flatbed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flatbed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.