tram

Pronunciation: /tɹæm/

Reading level: hard

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

  1. noun a conveyance that transports passengers or freight in carriers suspended from cables and supported by a series of towers
  2. noun a four-wheeled wagon that runs on tracks in a mine
  3. noun a wheeled vehicle that runs on rails and is propelled by electricity

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".

In classic literature

Synonyms

tramway, aerial tramway, cable tramway, ropeway

Semantic network

Broader (hypernyms)
conveyance

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