tram
/tɹæm/UK/tɹam/
tram noun: a passenger vehicle for public use that runs on tracks in the road (called a streetcar or trolley in North America).
Noun (1)
tram (plural trams)
- A passenger vehicle for public use that runs on tracks in the road (called a streetcar or trolley in North America).
- Lizzie and she got a dozen of large bottles and the loan of a basket and we got a currant pan and a half-pound of cooked ham in the shop next door and got on the tram for Whitehall.1981, Brendan Behan, edited by Peter Fallon, After the Wake: Twenty-one Prose Works including Previously Unpublished Material (Classic Irish Fiction Series), Dublin: The O'Brien Press, →ISBN
- A similar vehicle for carrying materials.
- Trams are a kind of sledge on which coals are brought from the place where they are hewn to the shaft. A tram has four wheels but a sledge is without wheels.1789, John Brand, History and Antiquities of the Town and County of Newcastle upon Tyne: Including an Account of the Coal Trade of that Place, volume II, London: White, →OCLC, page 681
- A people mover.
- The game Half-Life, for example, begins with a movie in which Gordon Freeman, the player's avatar, takes a tram ride through the Black Mesa research complex while a voice explains why he is there.2013, Ernest Adams, “Storytelling”, in Fundamentals of Game Design, 3rd edition, [San Francisco, Calif.]: New Riders, →ISBN, page 215
- An aerial cable car.
- It's possible that my family took the tram to Roosevelt Island at some point and the experience embedded itself deep into my imagination where it mixed with other flights of fancy (pun intended) of flying through a Gotham-like city like Batman.2014, Vivienne Gucwa, “Skylines”, in NY through the Lens, Cincinnati, Oh.: Print Books, →ISBN, page 129
- A train with wheels that runs on a road; a trackless train.
- Taking advantage of the VIP Experience at Universal Studios provides a more intimate and authentic look at the studio than does the regular studio tram tour. […] The VIP Experience gets you off the tram and behind the scenes: into sound stages, prop warehouses, and production facilities and on the...2005, Jan Friedman, Eccentric California, Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire: Bradt Travel Guides, →ISBN, page 124
- Each morning, still-groggy early-bird park-goers stumble from the parking-lot tram and head straight to La Brea's cafeteria-style Express for a caffeinated pick-me-up or a meal to start the day.2007, Matthew Richard Poole, Frommer's Los Angeles 2008, Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 236
- A car on a horse railway or tramway (horse trams preceded electric trams).
- The horse-drawn tram has vanished, and so will the trolley, and some eccentric Berlin writer in the twenties of the twenty-first century, wishing to portray our time, will go to a museum of technological history and locate a hundred-year-old streetcar, yellow, uncouth, with old-fashioned curved...1976 [1925], Vladimir Nabokov, “A Guide to Berlin”, in Details of a Sunset and Other Stories, McGraw-Hill, →ISBN, page 93
- The shaft of a cart.
- What struck me with most astonishment, however, was the liberal manner of our fair driver, who made no scruple of taking a leap, with the reins in her hand, and seating herself dexterously upon the shafts (or, in Westmoreland phrase, the trams) of the cart.1851, Thomas de Quincey, “William Wordsworth and Robert Southey”, in Literary Reminiscences; from the Autobiography of an English Opium-eater. […] In Two Volumes, volume II, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor...
- One of the rails of a tramway.
Verb (1)
tram (third-person singular simple present trams, present participle tramming, simple past and past participle trammed)
- 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.
- My invention consists of a frame suspended from another frame, on which the stone rests, and is leveled by screws from below, on which suspended frame are screws, which, being adjusted in the frame when the stone is first leveled by its face, serve afterward to level the stone at any time without...1875 October 29, James T. Beckwith, “[Patent number] 171,974. Leveling and Tramming Apparatus for Millstones. James T. Beckwith, Cameron Mills, N.Y. [Filed Oct. 29, 1875.]”, in Specifications and...
Noun (2)
tram (plural trams)
- 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.
- The two types of silk of greatest interest to the hand weaver are known as Organzine and Tram. Organzine is a warp silk and is made from two or more single threads twisted together in the opposite direction from the original twist. Tram is a weft silk and it is made from two or more singles lightly...1951, F[rederick] J[ohn] Christopher, “Materials and Quantities”, in Hand-loom Weaving, London: Frederick Muller, →OCLC
- Analysis of the seventeenth-century damask revealed that both its warp and weft were silk filaments; the organzine warp was dyed a dark blue and the tram silk of the weft was a somewhat lighter blue.2011, Nancy C. Britton, “Reconciling Conservation and Interpretation: Strategies for Long-term Display of a Late Seventeenth-century Bed”, in Kathryn Gill, Dinah Eastop, editors, Upholstery...
Verb (2)
tram (third-person singular simple present trams, present participle tramming, simple past and past participle trammed)
- To weave in this manner.
tram meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
tram in Hindi
- passenger vehicle
- ट्राम ṭrām
tram in Tamil
- அமிழ் தண்டூர்தி
tram in Marathi
- passenger vehicle
- ट्रॅम ṭrĕm
tram in Urdu
- passenger vehicle
- ٹْرام ṭrām
More languagesFewer languages
- tram in Bengali
- ট্রাম ṭram
- tram in Telugu
- ట్రామ్, ట్రాం
- tram in Malayalam
- ഇരുമ്പുപാളശകടം, വൈദ്യുതി ഉപയോഗിച്ച് ഓടുന്ന യാത്രാവണ്ടി
- tram in Kannada
- ಹಾದಿಬಂಡಿ, ಕಂಬಿಬಂಡಿ
- tram in Punjabi
- ਟ੍ਰਾਮ, ਟਰਾਮ
- tram in Gujarati
- ટ્રામ, ટરામ, ટ્રામે
- tram in Odia
- ଟ୍ରାମ୍, ଟ୍ରାମ, ଟ୍ରାମ୍ କରିବା
- tram in Nepali
- ट्राम, ट्रम, ट्राममा
- tram in Pashto
- تراموی trāmway, ټرام ṭrām
- tram in Tagalog
- trambiya
- tram in Arabic
- تْرَام trām, تْرَامْوَاي tramwāy
- tram in Malay
- trem
- tram in Indonesian
- trem
- tram in Thai
- รถราง rót-raang
- tram in Vietnamese
- tàu điện
- tram in Myanmar
- သံလမ်းရထား samlam:ra.hta:
Examples of tram in a sentence
- In Melbourne, you would usually have to hail a tram when you are travelling late at night and there are no other passengers waiting at your stop.
- The new trams will join an existing 21-strong Urbos tram fleet in Birmingham.
- Well, Melbourne should be the "city of gunzels", says former tram conductor Roberto D'Andrea.
Synonyms of tram
Forms of tram
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | trams |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | trams |
| present participle | tramming |
| past participle | trammed |
| past | trammed |
Origin of tram
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".
From Spanish trama, or French trame (“weft”). Doublet of trama.
Words formed from tram
- trampot
- trim-tram
- aerial tram
- airtram
- man on the Bondi tram
- man on the Shau Kei Wan tram
- shoot through like a Bondi tram
- supertram
- tramcar
- tram driver
- tramful
- tram horse
- Tram Inn
- tramless
- tram line
- tramline
- tramload
- tram locomotive
- trammage
- tramplate
- tramrail
- tram rail
- tramroad
- tram-road
- tramshed
- tramstop
- tram stop
- tram track
- tram-train
- tramway
- tram-way
- tramyard
Phrases with tram
Words that rhyme with tram
47 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about tram
- What does tram mean?
- Tram means a passenger vehicle for public use that runs on tracks in the road (called a streetcar or trolley in North America).
- What is tram in Hindi?
- Tram in Hindi is ट्राम (ṭrām). See Tram meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is tram?
- Tram can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce tram?
- Tram is pronounced /tɹæm/.
- What is the plural of tram?
- The plural of tram is trams.
Words near tram in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tram (page history and authors); tram (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tram (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tram (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tram (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tram (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tram (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tram (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tram (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: en-au-tram.ogg.
Cite this entry: “tram.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tram. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.