Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A streetcar.
  • noun A device that collects electric current from an underground conductor, an overhead wire, or a third rail and transmits it to the motor of an electric vehicle.
  • noun A small truck or car operating on a track and used in a mine, quarry, or factory for conveying materials.
  • noun A wheeled carriage, cage, or basket that is suspended from and travels on an overhead track.
  • noun Chiefly British A cart.
  • transitive & intransitive verb To convey (passengers) or travel by trolley.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A narrow cart used by coster-mongers, and pushed by hand or drawn by a donkey. Also troll.
  • noun A small truck or car for running on tracks in a rolling-mill or furnace. It is used to move heavy materials, and can be used as a tip-car.
  • noun In Eng. lace-making, lace the pattern of which is outlined with a thicker thread, or a flat narrow border made up of several such threads. The ground is usually a double ground, showing hexagonal and triangular meshes.
  • noun A metallic roller or pulley arranged to travel over, upon, and in contact with an electric conductor suspended overhead, and connected with a flexible conductor or a trolley-pole for conveying the current into the motor circuit on an electric car, as in many electric street-railways.
  • To convey by a trolley, as by a truck or car running upon a rail and driven mechanically or electrically.
  • To ride in an electrically-propelled car using the trolley system to transmit current to the motors.
  • noun Hence, a street-railway car propelled electrically by current taken by a trolley from a conductor.
  • noun A hand-car used on the rails by workmen on a railroad.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun engraving, engraving, engraving A form of truck which can be tilted, for carrying railroad materials, or the like.
  • noun engraving A narrow cart that is pushed by hand or drawn by an animal.
  • noun (Mach.) A truck from which the load is suspended in some kinds of cranes.
  • noun (Electric Railway) A truck which travels along the fixed conductors, and forms a means of connection between them and a railway car.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun New Zealand, UK A cart or shopping cart.
  • noun UK A hand truck.
  • noun UK A soapbox car.
  • noun UK A gurney.
  • noun A single-pole device for collecting electrical current from an overhead electical line usually for a streetcar.
  • noun US A streetcar or a system of streetcars.
  • noun US, colloquial A light rail system or a train on such a system.
  • verb To bring to by trolley.
  • verb To use a trolley vehicle to go from one place to another.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a wheeled vehicle that runs on rails and is propelled by electricity

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably from troll.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

This definition is lacking an etymology or has an incomplete etymology. You can help Wiktionary by giving it a proper etymology.

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Examples

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  • in the UK, trolley is the name given to what americans would call a shopping cart.

    April 8, 2008

  • "In Eng. lace-making, lace the pattern of which is outlined with a thicker thread, or a flat narrow border made up of several such threads. The ground is usually a double ground, showing hexagonal and triangular meshes." --Cent. Dict.

    May 4, 2011