streetcar en · NOUN
Pronunciation
- (Southern-England) audio
- /ˈstɹitˌkɑɹ/ (General-American)
Etymology
From street + car. Coined before the era of motorcars, the term emphasized a type of car on rails that were in the street (along with foot traffic, wagons, and carriages) rather than on a separate, dedicated railroad, as a railcar is.
Meanings
-
(Canada, US) A tram or light rail vehicle, usually a single car but sometimes multiple cars attached together, operating on city streets; a trolley car.
Here, outside, in the light and the shade and the heat, there was a great tinkling of the bells of innumerable streetcars, and a constant strolling and shuffling and rustling of many pedestrians, a large proportion of whom were young women in Pompadour-looking dresses.
1878, Henry James, An International Episode:Tired as he felt at night, and dark and bitter cold as it was in the morning, Jurgis generally chose to walk; at the hours other workmen were traveling, the streetcar monopoly saw fit to put on so few cars that there would be men hanging to every foot of the backs of them and often crouching upon the snow-covered roof.
1905 April–October, Upton Sinclair, chapter XX, in The Jungle, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 26 February 1906, →OCLC:[…]but after all there's nothing less displeasing to me than a beefsteak smothered in mushrooms on a balcony in sound of the Broadway streetcars, with a hand-organ playing down below, and the boys hollering extras about the latest suicide.
1908, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “Hostages to Momus”, in The Gentle Grafter, New York, N.Y.: The McClure Company, →OCLC:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| streetcars | Number=Plur | lexicographic |