trundle
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈtɹʌndəl/
rhymes: -ʌndəl
Forms: form: trundles
form: trundling
form: trundled
form: trundled
Etymology: From Middle English trondlin, trondelen, a variation of Middle English trendlen, from Old English trendlian. More at trendle, trindle.
Senses: examples: text: Every morning, the vendors trundle their carts out into the market.
text: to trundle a bed or a gun carriage
text: When the bin men come down the back alley to trundle our wheelie bins to their truck, the dog becomes hysterical […]
ref: 1995, Val McDermid, The Mermaids Singing, New York: HarperPaperbacks, published 1997, page 55:
glosses: To wheel or roll (an object on wheels), especially by pushing, often slowly or heavily.
examples: text: […] they are attended like the Lords and Princes of the earth, with mighty retinues, and are carryed in coaches with foure or six horses a peece in them, when a wheele barrow such as they trundle white wine vineger about the towne were a great deale fitter for them […]
ref: 1637, John Bastwick, The Answer of John Bastwick, Doctor of Phisicke, to the Exceptions Made against His Letany […] which is annexed to the Letany it selfe, Leiden, Letany, Part 2:
text: 1761, George Colman, The Genius, No. 5, 6 August, 1761, in Prose on Several Occasions, London: T. Cadel, 1787, pp. 57-58,
The reading female hires her novels from some country circulating library, which consists of about an hundred volumes, or, is trundled from the next market town in a wheelbarrow;
text: […] Peter trundled a load of watermelons up the hill in his wheelbarrow.
ref: 1918, Willa Cather, My Ántonia, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Book 1, Chapter 5, p. 39:
text: The kraal walls are two feet thick and higher than his head; they are made of flat blue-grey stones, every one of them trundled here by donkey-cart.
ref: 1997, J. M. Coetzee, chapter 11, in Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life, London: Secker & Warburg, page 91:
glosses: To transport (something or someone) using an object on wheels, especially one that is pushed.
examples: text: […] he can glibly run over Non-sense, as an empty Cart trundles down a Hill.
ref: 1662, John Birkenhead, The Assembly-Man, London: Richard Marriot, page 14:
text: Until the main road from Hatfield to Hertford was diverted a few years ago, heavy lorries trundling through the village sometimes knocked chunks off corner buildings, but now the village has regained much of its former tranquillity.
ref: 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 224, about Hertingfordbury:
text: Suddenly from around a bend a wagon trundled toward him.
ref: 1987, Toni Morrison, Beloved, New York: Vintage, published 2004, page 25:
text: My trip ends at Wrexham General. While the '150' trundles the final half-mile down the single line to Wrexham Central, I nip over the footbridge to explore the main part of the station.
ref: 2022 November 2, Paul Bigland, “New trains, old trains, and splendid scenery”, in RAIL, number 969, page 58:
glosses: To move heavily (on wheels).
examples: text: I’ll clap a pair of horses to your chaise that shall trundle you off in a twinkling,
ref: 1773, Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer, London: F. Newbery, act II, page 45:
text: 1928, W. B. Yeats, “Meditations in Time of Civil War,” 6. “The Stare’s Nest by My Window,” in The Tower, London: Macmillan, p. 27,
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
glosses: To move (something or someone), often heavily or clumsily.
examples: text: Betty. They are gone Sir, in great Anger. / Pet[ulant]. Enough, let 'em trundle. Anger helps Complexion, ſaves Paint.
ref: 1700, [William] Congreve, The Way of the World, a Comedy. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, Act I, scene ix, page 13:
text: […] we set off again, the dog trundling apathetic at his master’s heels,
ref: 1957, D. H. Lawrence, Etruscan Places, New York: Viking, Chapter 3, part 1, p. 64:
text: she let the marmalade stay where it was, trundling in blobs down her plump cheeks
ref: 1977, Diana Wynne Jones, Charmed Life:
glosses: To move, often heavily or clumsily.
examples: text: to trundle a hoop or a ball
text: 1565, Andrew Boorde, Merie Tales of the Made Men of Gotam, London: Thomas Colwell, Tale 3,
He layde downe hys poake, and tooke the cheeses, and dyd trundle them downe the hyll one after another:
text: If thou, my Deere, a winner be
At trundling of the Ball,
The wager thou shalt have, and me,
And my misfortunes all.
ref: 1648, Robert Herrick, “Stool-ball”, in Hesperides, London: John Williams and Francis Eglesfield, page 280:
text: At gaming, perhaps, I may win;
With cards I may take the flats in,
Or trundle false dice, and they’re nick’d:
ref: 1784, John O’Keeffe, The Poor Soldier, Dublin, act II, scene 5, page 27:
text: […] all our dainty terms for fratricide,
Terms which we trundle smoothly o’er our tongues
Like mere abstractions,
ref: 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Fears in Solitude, London: J. Johnson, page 6:
text: 1818, John Keats, letter to Fanny Keats dated 4 July, 1818, in Sidney Colvin (ed.), Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, London: Macmillan, 1891, p. 122,
[I am] so fatigued that when I am asleep you might sew my nose to my great toe and trundle me round the town like a Hoop without waking me.
synonyms: roll
glosses: To cause (something) to roll or revolve; to roll (something) along.
examples: text: At Chrystes death, whan the Apostles all
Theyr mayster dyd leaue, throughe mutabylytie
Men were founde lyght, and trundlynge as a ball
In them was no fayth, but infydelytye
ref: 1542, Robert Burdet, “The Fawcon”, in A Dyalogue Defensyve for Women, London: Rycharde Banckes:
text: Water is apt to move, being round like Balls,
No points to fixe, doth trundle as it falls.
ref: 1653, Margaret Cavendish, “The Agilenesse of Water”, in Poems, and Fancies, London: J. Martin and J. Allestrye, page 28:
synonyms: roll
glosses: To roll or revolve; to roll along.
Derived terms: trundle along
trundle out
trundler