Definition of "truck"

“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 put the hinder part to the whull, in an hour or two.”

1843, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 3, in Wyandotte‎

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, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley

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

That's why driving truck became more than a job for many in the industry. Driving truck was a lifestyle.

2009, James Beach, Peterbilt: Long-Haul Legend‎, page 48

Goods were therefore conveyed about the town almost exclusively in trucks drawn by dogs.

1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter 3, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volumes (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans

From the doors of these rooms went men with loaded trucks, to the platform where freight cars were waiting to be filled; and one went out there and realized with a start that he had come at last to the ground floor of this enormous building.

1905, Upton Sinclair, chapter III, in The Jungle, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 26 February 1906

“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

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

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

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, page 22

“What's ol' Harrison up to these days, Larry?” Grandpa asked. “Oh, he's still trucking along,” Uncle Larry replied.

2018 September 4, Brittany Terwilliger, The Insatiables, Amberjack Publishing

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

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. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: John W[illiam] Parker, […]

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

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

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 mentioned) is attempted.

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

I obtained my first view of a lunar city. It was built around a crater, and the buildings were terraced back from the rim, the terraces being generally devoted to the raising of garden truck and the principal fruit-bearing trees and shrubs.

1923, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter 10, in The Moon Maid‎

'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, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four, London: Spencer Blackett