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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

trundler en · NOUN

Etymology

From trundle + -er.

Meanings

  1. A person who trundles (something or someone).
    • I shall begin with the Married Ladies, as this order will be found to be far the most numerous, and includes all the married women in town or country above the degree of a chair-woman or the trundler of a wheel-barrow. 1755, George Colman, The Connoisseur, volume 1, London: R. Baldwin, page 260:
    • Pushing the pram […] he would have struck you that much less as a character headed for rhetorical doom. […] The child grew daily more the spit of his trundler, with the jolliest impersonation of his father’s grin. 1954, Peter De Vries, chapter 20, in The Tunnel of Love,, Boston: Little, Brown, page 223:
    • The canapés arrived, a whole trolley-load, and Jane gave its trundler a dollar […] 1990, James Mitchell, chapter 49, in A Woman to Be Loved, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, page 562:
    • According to the venerable woodcuts which form the frontispieces to Primers of the dark ages, the paths of learning run through […] pleasant pastures agreeably diversified, and peopled by joyous hoop-trundlers and kite-flyers, 1845, Albert Richard Smith, chapter 8, in The Fortunes of the Scattergood Family, volume 1, London: R. Bentley, page 122:
    • At length a friendly trundler of a Bath-chair […] came to my assistance, 1879, George Augustus Sala, chapter 19, in Paris Herself Again in 1878-1879, 2nd edition, volume 1, London: Remington, page 326:
  2. A bowler (player throwing the ball).
    • Sometimes he would bowl to one of his children, and although on the field (a small strip of garden) there were only two cricketers, he would turn it into an England v. Australia match. The one batsman would stand for eleven men, and the one trundler would play the part of the regular and change bowlers […] 1914, William Bardsley Brash, chapter 10, in Love and Life, London: C.H. Kelly, page 146:
    • The high delivery of modern bowlers would horrify the famous trundlers of the good old days, when to deliver the ball from above the level of the shoulder was as heinous an offence as throwing is to-day […] 1899, W. G. Grace, “W.G.”: Cricketing Reminiscences and Personal Recollections, London: J. Bowden, Introduction, page xv:
    • 1978, Michael Anthony, The Making of Port-of-Spain, Port-of-Spain: Ministry of Sport, Culture, and Youth Affairs, Volume 2, Chapter 21, p. 123, It was the first time the crowd was seeing this lithe, gangling trundler, sending down orthodox spin from the left arm.
  3. A bowler (player throwing the ball). ▸ A bowler who bowls slowly; a mediocre bowler.
    • The next bowler was a trundler, and Luton, evidently inspired by Bognor’s cover drive, hit him to all corners of the ground. 1979, Tim Heald, chapter 5, in Just Desserts, New York: Scribner, page 104:
    • But he wouldn’t be a great cricketer; he was just a trundler, really, accurate enough, but no flair. 2010, Kate De Goldi, chapter 8, in The 10 p.m. Question, Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, page 217:
  4. (New-Zealand) A device that is trundled (pushed or pulled on wheels). ▸ Shopping cart.
    • A North Shore town centre is being ringed by an electronic fence in an attempt to stop thefts of supermarket trundlers. 2010, Wayne Thompson, “Electronic war on trolley thieves”, in New Zealand Herald:
    • The supermarket, its turnstiles and trundlers, gave substance to hopes as desirable and distant as heaven. 1989, Trudie McNaughton, In Deadly Earnest: A Collection of Fiction by New Zealand Women, 1870s-1980s, Century Hutchinson, page 153:
  5. (New-Zealand) A device that is trundled (pushed or pulled on wheels). ▸ A foldable shopping bag with a light frame and wheels.
    • Taking the blue canvas shopping trundler from the alcove in the hallway […] Mattina walked to where she hoped the dairy might be, 1988, Janet Frame, The Carpathians, New York: G. Braziller, Part 1, Chapter 4, p. 24:
    • […] I couldn’t see where I was going and banged into a baggy old lady pulling a trundler full of shopping, 1996, Tina Shaw, chapter 17, in Birdie, Auckland: David Ling, page 129:
  6. (Australia, New-Zealand) A device that is trundled (pushed or pulled on wheels). ▸ Golf pushcart.
    • […] many golf trolleys, or trundlers as the Australians call them, are equipped with a small seat upon which to rest between shots. 1988, Brian Morgan, “Australia, New Zealand and the Far East”, in A World Portrait of Golf, New York: Gallery Books, page 96:
  7. (obsolete) A device that is trundled (pushed or pulled on wheels). ▸ A device made of a wooden stick with a wheel at the bottom, a crossbar handle at the top, and a hook in the middle, used to move pails and cans while gardening.
  8. (obsolete) A device that is trundled (pushed or pulled on wheels). ▸ A wooden-wheeled cart used for gardening.
  9. (obsolete, slang) Pea (vegetable).

Forms

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trundlers Number=Plur lexicographic