Word.ws English Dictionary

truck

UK/tɹʌk/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Ireland/tɹʊk/

truck noun: a small wheel or roller, specifically the wheel of a gun carriage. Also the abbreviation of railroad truck or wheel truck.

truck: a small wheel or roller, specifically the wheel of a gun carriage
Image: Teppo Lainio, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

truck (countable and uncountable, plural trucks)

  1. A small wheel or roller, specifically the wheel of a gun carriage.
    • “Put that cannon up once, and I'll answer for it that no Injin faces it. 'Twill be as good as a dozen sentinels,” answered Joel. “As for mountin’, I thought of that before I said a syllable about the crittur. There's the new truck-wheels in the court, all ready to hold it, and the carpenters can...1843, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 3, in Wyandotte
  2. The ball on top of a flagpole.
  3. On a wooden mast, a circular disc (or sometimes a rectangle) of wood near or at the top of the mast, usually with holes or sheaves to reeve signal halyards; also a temporary or emergency place for a lookout. "Main" refers to the mainmast, whereas a truck on another mast may be called (on the mizzenmast, for example) "mizzen-truck".
    • But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low?1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “'”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
  4. (Australia, Canada, India, US) A heavier motor vehicle designed to carry goods or to pull a semi-trailer designed to carry goods; (in Malaysia/Singapore) a such vehicle with a closed or covered carriage.
    • We rented a truck big enough to carry the whole load in one trip.
    • A line of fifty trucks from the Zenith Steel and Machinery Company was attacked by strikers-rushing out from the sidewalk, pulling drivers from the seats, smashing carburetors and commutators, while telephone girls cheered from the walk, and small boys heaved bricks.1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 1, in Babbit
    Synonyms:
    lorry
  5. (UK) A railroad car, chiefly one designed to carry goods.
  6. Any smaller wagon or cart or vehicle of various designs, pushed or pulled by hand or (obsolete) pulled by an animal, used to move and sometimes lift goods, like those in hotels for moving luggage or in libraries for moving books.
    • Goods were therefore conveyed about the town almost exclusively in trucks drawn by dogs.1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter III, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and...
    • He closed the door, locked it, and took out the key in readiness. When Mr Lidmarsh returned with the water he found Carrados seated on a market truck.1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries
  7. The part of a skateboard or roller skate that joins the wheels to the deck, consisting of a hanger, baseplate, kingpin, and bushings, and sometimes mounted with a riser in between.
  8. A platform with wheels or casters.
  9. Dirt or other messiness.
    • “Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What is that truck?”1876, Mark Twain, chapter I, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Verb (1)

truck (third-person singular simple present trucks, present participle trucking, simple past and past participle trucked)

  1. (intransitive) To drive a truck.
    • My father has been trucking for 20 years.
  2. (transitive) To convey by truck.
    • Last week, Cletus trucked 100 pounds of lumber up to Dubuque.
    • Colson was to truck the 'plane to Alice Springs, where it would be trained to Adelaide for repairs.1931, Ion L. Idriess, Lasseter's Last Ride, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 46
  3. (US, intransitive, slang) To travel, to proceed.
    • I want to tell you a story from 'way back: / Truck on down and gig me, jack / In eighteen hundred and sixty-five / A hep cat started some jive / He said, "Come on, gates, and jump with me / At the Juneteenth Jamboree."1940, Sam Price, “June Teenth Jamboree”, performed by Louis Jordan
    • I brought them around again, hard, and some fluff hit me in the face, cool and wet. . .and I laughed and trucked on down, a mad. fiddler dancing to my own music, happy and alone in my private white world.1974 October, Skiing, volume 27, number 2, page 194
  4. (Canada, US, intransitive, slang) To persist, to endure.
    • Keep on trucking!
    • It has been five months since I left Mt. Diablo , and I'm still trucking along gaining slowly and I'm just a few pounds from my goal healthy weight. I'm the happiest I've been in my life because through my experiences with anorexia I[…]1988, Krista Brown, Prepared Statement, to the United States House Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, regarding 'Eating Disorders: The Impact on Children and Families', July 31, 1987...
  5. (intransitive, film production) To move a camera parallel to the movement of the subject.
  6. (slang, transitive) To fight or otherwise physically engage with.
    • Both deputies were big, made of dense flesh and tough experience. . . . I wouldn't have wanted to truck with either one of them.1993, Sue Grafton, "J" Is for Judgment
  7. (slang, transitive) To run over or through a tackler in American football.

Verb (2)

truck (third-person singular simple present trucks, present participle trucking, simple past and past participle trucked)

  1. (dialectal, intransitive) To fail; run out; run short; be unavailable; diminish; abate.
  2. (dialectal, intransitive) To give in; give way; knuckle under; truckle.
  3. (dialectal, intransitive) To deceive; cheat; defraud.

Verb (3)

truck (third-person singular simple present trucks, present participle trucking, simple past and past participle trucked)

  1. (Scotland, UK, dialectal, intransitive, transitive) To tread (down); stamp on; trample (down).

Verb (4)

truck (third-person singular simple present trucks, present participle trucking, simple past and past participle trucked)

  1. (dialectal, intransitive, transitive) To trade, exchange; barter.
    • We will begin by supposing the international trade to be in form, what it always is in reality, an actual trucking of one commodity against another.1848, John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: John W[illiam] Parker, […], →OCLC
  2. (dialectal, intransitive) To engage in commerce; to barter or deal.
    • But while this businesse was in hand, Arrived one Captaine Argall, and Master Thomas Sedan, sent by Master Cornelius to truck with the Collony [...]1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, Kupperman 1988 edition
  3. (dialectal, intransitive) To have dealings or social relationships with; to engage with.

Noun (2)

truck (plural trucks)

  1. (dialectal, in plural, intransitive, obsolete, often) Small, humble items; things, often for sale or barter.
    • There was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of watermelons and green corn and such-like truck.1884, Mark Twain, chapter 20, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
    • It happened in this way, on a day when I was indulging in a particularly greenery-yallery fit of gloom. Norah rushed into my room. I think I was mooning over some old papers, or letters, or ribbons, or some such truck in the charming, knife-turning way that women have when they are blue.1911, Edna Ferber, chapter 5, in Dawn O'Hara, the Girl who Laughed
  2. (dialectal, historical, intransitive) The practice of paying workers in kind, or with tokens only exchangeable at a shop owned by the employer [forbidden in the 19th century by the Truck Acts].
  3. (US, attributive, dialectal, intransitive, often) Garden produce, groceries (see truck garden).
    • As the home house people (the industrious part of them at least) might want ground for their truck patches, they might, for this purpose, cultivate what would be cleared. But I would have the ground from the cross fence by the Spring, quite round by the Wharf, first grubbed, before the (above...1792 November 4, George Washington, (Please provide the book title or journal name), quoted in The writings of George Washington from the original manuscript sources: Volume 32, 1745-1799.
    • "Wid dat, Brer Rabbit 'low dat Mr. Man done been had 'im hired fer ter take keer er his truck patch, an' keep out de minks, de mush-rats an' de weasels.1903, Joel Chandler Harris, chapter 11, in "Brother Rabbit's Cradle", New Stories of the Old Plantation
  4. (dialectal, intransitive, usually) Social intercourse; dealings, relationships.
    • "How can I decide?" said I. "You have not told me what you want of me. But I tell you now that if it is anything against the safety of the fort I will have no truck with it, so you can drive home your knife and welcome."1890 February, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “The Strange Story of Jonathan Small”, in The Sign of Four (Standard Library), London: Spencer Blackett […], →OCLC, page 240
  5. (dialectal, intransitive, usually) Relevance, bearing.
    • Many people involved in classical music today, themselves gay, see no reason why their sexuality should have any truck in their music.1983 December 17, Kenneth Hale-Wehmann, “Coming Out on Record: A Triumph in Gay Music”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 22, page 15
    • For this reason, Washington is a wonderful and proven humbler of the Texan conceit: Washington isn't a state, and yet it is metaphorically bigger than Texas. It's where Texas learns that not everyone is in love with Texas. (Where yer from orig'nally has no truck here.)2001 January 19, Hank Stuever, “A Fantasy as Big As All Texas”, in Washington Post

Also used as

truck is also the abbreviation of railroad truck or wheel truck.

truck meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

truck in Hindi

heavier motor vehicle designed to carry goods — see also semi-trailer truck, pickup truck
ट्रक ṭrak, लारी lārī, माल गाड़ी māl gāṛī, लॉरी lŏrī

truck in Tamil

heavier motor vehicle designed to carry goods — see also semi-trailer truck, pickup truck
சுமையுந்து cumaiyuntu

truck in Marathi

heavier motor vehicle designed to carry goods — see also semi-trailer truck, pickup truck
ट्रक ṭrak, लॉरी lŏrī

truck in Urdu

heavier motor vehicle designed to carry goods — see also semi-trailer truck, pickup truck
ٹْرَک ṭrak, لاری lārī
More languagesFewer languages
truck in Bengali
লরি lori, ট্রাক ṭrak
truck in Telugu
లారీ lārī, ట్రక్ ṭrak
truck in Malayalam
ട്രക്ക് ṭrakkŭ
truck in Kannada
ಟ್ರಕ್ ṭrak
truck in Punjabi
ਟਰੱਕ ṭarakka
truck in Gujarati
ટ્રક ṭrak
truck in Odia
ଟ୍ରକ ṭraka
truck in Assamese
ট্ৰাক trak
truck in Nepali
ट्रक, ट्रकले, ट्रकलाई
truck in Pashto
لارۍ lārᶕy, ټرک ṭrak
truck in Tagalog
dakbatlag
truck in Arabic
شَاحِنَة šāḥina, كَمْيُون kamyūn, لُورِي lūrī
truck in Malay
lori, trak
truck in Indonesian
truk, prahoto
truck in Thai
รถบรรทุก rót-ban-túk
truck in Vietnamese
xe tải
truck in Myanmar
ကုန်ကား kunka:, ကုန်တင်ကား kuntangka:
Dhivehi
ލޮރީ lorī

Examples of truck in a sentence

  • There's the new truck-wheels in the court, all ready to hold it, and the carpenters can put the hinder part to the whull, in an hour or two.”1843, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 3, in Wyandotte:
  • That's why driving truck became more than a job for many in the industry.2009, James Beach, Peterbilt: Long-Haul Legend, page 48:
  • Instead, when relatives heard that the right ship had docked, they trucked over to Ellis Island and waited desperately by the Kissing Post.2009 May 20, Maggie Koerth-Baker, “Ten important kisses in history”, in Mental Floss, CNN:
  • In November 1978, Hay and Starratt trucked on down toward the Classic City in a VW Van (of course), following the Grateful Dead's tour […]2022 August 12, Lee Valentine Smith, “Athens band still Squallin' after all these years”, in Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

All 40 example sentences with truck

Synonyms of truck

All synonyms of truck

Forms of truck

Noun
pluraltrucks
Verb
third-person singular presenttrucks
present participletrucking
past participletrucked
pasttrucked
alternative formtrock

Plural of truck: trucks

Origin of truck

Perhaps a shortening of truckle, related to Latin trochus (“iron hoop, wheel”) from Ancient Greek τροχός (trokhós).

From Middle English truken, troken, trukien, from Old English trucian (“to fail, run short, deceive, disappoint”), from Proto-West Germanic *trokōn (“to fail, miss, lack”), from Proto-Indo-European *derew-, *derwu- (“to tear, wrap, reap”), from Proto-Indo-European *der- (“to flay, split”). Cognate with Middle Low German troggelen (“to cheat, deceive, swindle”), Dutch troggelen (“to extort”), German dialectal truggeln (“to flatter, fawn”).

From dialectal truck, truk, trokk, probably of North Germanic origin, compare Norwegian dialectal trokka, trakka (“to stamp, trample, go to and fro”), Danish trykke (“to press, press down, crush, squeeze”), Swedish trycka. More at thrutch.

Words formed from truck

Phrases with truck

93 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with truck

39 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about truck

What does truck mean?
Truck means a small wheel or roller, specifically the wheel of a gun carriage.
What is truck in Hindi?
Truck in Hindi is ट्रक (ṭrak), लारी (lārī), माल गाड़ी (māl gāṛī). See Truck meaning in Hindi.
How do you use truck in a sentence?
There's the new truck-wheels in the court, all ready to hold it, and the carpenters can put the hinder part to the whull, in an hour or two.”
What part of speech is truck?
Truck can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce truck?
Truck is pronounced /tɹʌk/ (UK).
What is the plural of truck?
The plural of truck is trucks.

Words near truck in the dictionary

  1. trucidates
  2. trucidating
  3. trucidation
  4. trucidations
  5. trucing
  6. truck
  7. truck and trailer
  8. truck bay
  9. truck bays
  10. truck beam
  11. truck beams

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: truck (page history and authors); truck (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-us-truck.ogg, en-au-truck.ogg.

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