tram

CEFRB1

/tɹæm/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A vehicle that runs on rails in a city.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    A people mover.

Examples

  • In Montpellier, the tram clattering along used to wake me up every day.

  • Is the ticket good for the floating tram as well?

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5
Synonyms
2

Also pronounced

  • [t̠ᶴɹeə̯m]
  • /tɹam/

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. A similar vehicle for carrying materials.

  2. A passenger vehicle for public use that runs on tracks in the road (called a streetcar or trolley in North America).

  3. An aerial cable car.

More examples

In context

  • You had better go by tram.

  • 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.

  • 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.

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The old blank rattled loudly as it moved along the iron tracks.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

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...