travois
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: business
forestry
Etymology: PIE word
 *tréyes
The noun is derived from Michif travawy (IPA⁽ᵏᵉʸ⁾: /tɹæˈvɔɪ/), from Canadian French travail (“travois”), from French travail, from Middle French travail, from Old French travail (“frame for restraining horses and cattle for medical treatment or shoeing”), from Late Latin tripālium (“torture device consisting of three stakes”), from Latin tripālis (“having, or propped up by, three pales or stakes”) (from tri- (prefix meaning ‘three’) + pālus (“pale, stake”)) + -ium (suffix forming nouns). Doublet of travel and travail.
The spelling travois and pronunciations /ˈtɹævwɑ(ː)/, /tɹævˈwɑ/ are probably influenced by French -ois (suffix forming adjectives relating to particular countries, regions, or cities, their associated inhabitant names, and the local languages or dialects).
The verb is derived from the noun.
Inflected forms:
form: travoises
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: travois
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: travail
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: travoise
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: travoy
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: travoises
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: travoising
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: travoised
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: travoised
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A frame, often consisting of two poles tied together at one end to form a V-shaped structure with the vertex attached to a dog, horse, etc., or held by a person and the other ends touching the ground, which was used by indigenous peoples (notably the Plains Aboriginals of North America) to drag loads over land.
pos: noun
tags: US
historical
examples: On the plains they will have horses dragging travoises, dogs with travoises, women and children loaded with impedimenta, […]
Riding out for wood he watched his shadow and the shadow of the horse and travois cross those palings tree by tree. Boyd rode in the travois holding the axe as if he'd keep guard over the wood they'd gathered […]
gloss: A similar piece of equipment used to transport something by dragging; especially a stretcher dragged by a horse, mule, etc., used to transport an ill or injured person.
pos: noun
tags: broadly
gloss: A sled dragged by a horse or ox to transport logs, with one end of each log on the sled and the other end touching the ground.
pos: noun
tags: Canada
US
broadly
dated
gloss: To transport (someone or something) by means of a travois.
pos: verb
tags: broadly
transitive
examples: At White Sands, we found drag-marks made by the ends of wooden poles while excavating for fossil footprints. Sometimes these appear as just one trace, while at other times they occur as two parallel, equidistant traces. A pole or poles used in this fashion is called a travois. . . To help interpret these features, we . . . used different combinations of poles to recreate simple, hand-pulled travois . . . In our experiments the pole-ends dragged along the mud truncate footprints in the same way as the fossil example in New Mexico. . . . the footprints and drag-marks tell a story of the movement of resources . . . Adults pulled the simple. . . travois, while a group of children tagged along. . . Travois are known from historical documents and accounts of Indigenous peoples and their traditions. They were . . .associated with dogs or horses, but were pulled by humans in our tests. . . they represent early examples of the handcart or wheelbarrow, but without the wheel.
gloss: To use a travois to transport a load.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
rare
Translations: