Definitions

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

  • noun A small wheel or roller; a caster.
  • intransitive verb To be servile or submissive. synonym: fawn.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A wheel of a pulley; also, a pulley.
  • noun Jabol, a truckle or pullie. … Moufle, a truckle for a pullie.
  • noun A small wheel or caster.
  • noun A small flat cheese.
  • noun A truckle-bed.
  • To move on rollers or casters; trundle.
  • To sleep in a truckle-bed. See truckle, n., 4, and truckle-bed.
  • Hence To be tamely subordinate, as a pupil to his tutor, or a servant to his master; yield or bend obsequiously to the will of another; submit; cringe; act in a servile manner: usually with to or under.

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

  • noun A small wheel or caster.
  • intransitive verb To yield or bend obsequiously to the will of another; to submit; to creep.
  • transitive verb To roll or move upon truckles, or casters; to trundle.

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

  • noun a small wheel; a caster or pulley
  • verb To roll or move upon truckles, or casters; to trundle.
  • verb intransitive to act in a submissive manner; to fawn, submit to a superior

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

  • noun a low bed to be slid under a higher bed
  • verb try to gain favor by cringing or flattering
  • verb yield to out of weakness

Etymologies

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

[Middle English trocle, pulley, from Anglo-Norman, from Latin trochlea, system of pulleys; see trochlea.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English trokel, trocle, trookyl, from Medieval Latin trochlea ("a block, sheaf containing one or more pulleys"); or from a diminutive of truck ("wheel"), formed with -le, equivalent to truck +‎ -le.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From a back formation of truckle bed (a bed on which a pupil slept, because it was rolled on casters into a lower position under the master's larger bed), from Middle English trookylbed. Compare also trundle bed. Assisted by false association with Middle English *trukelen, truken, trokien, trukien, from Old English trucian ("to fail, diminish"), Low German truggeln ("to flatter, fawn"), see truck.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word truckle.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • You've got to love a word whose definitions include "to bend obsequiously," "a low bed to slide under another bed," and "a type of barrel cheese."

    October 1, 2007

  • You're right, skipvia. I do. :-)

    October 1, 2007

  • me, too!

    October 1, 2007

  • Green-painted steel truckle, mattress besmirched with

    previous occupants' greasy exudings...

    - Peter Reading, Going On, 1985

    June 19, 2009

  • "I am convinced that, broadly speaking, the audience must accept the piece on my own terms; that it is fatal to truckle to what one conceives to be popular taste."

    - Sidney Joseph Perelman, quoted in 'The Perelman Papers', by Herbert Mitgang, New York Times, 15 March 1981.

    August 25, 2009

  • "2. To behave with meanness and servility; crouch; truckle." -- From the Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia definition for sneak.

    July 11, 2011

  • "She was a fine dashing woman, and without being either pretty or beautiful she gave the impression of being both, mostly from the splendid way she carried her head. She despised her scrub of a husband, who truckled to her; and she had taken to music as a relief from him..."

    -Patrick O'Brien, _Master and Commander_

    July 28, 2011