Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A small wheel or roller.
- n. The motion or noise of rolling.
- n. A trundle bed.
- n. A low-wheeled cart; a dolly.
- v. To push or propel on wheels or rollers: "I doubt if Emerson could trundle a wheelbarrow through the streets” ( Henry David Thoreau).
- v. To spin; twirl.
- v. To move along by or as if by rolling or spinning.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In cricket, to bowl.
- n. A wheel small in diameter, but broad and massive so as to be adapted to support a heavy weight, as the wheel of a caster.
- n. A small wheel or pinion having its teeth formed of cylinders or spindles: same as lantern-wheel.
- n. One of the spindles of such a wheel.
- n. A small carriage with low wheels; a truck.
- n. A trundle-bed.
- n. In heraldry, a quill of thread for embroiderers, usually represented as a spool or reel, and the thread as of gold.
- To roll, as something on low wheels or casters; move or bowl along, as a round body; hence, to move with a rolling gait.
- To revolve; twirl.
- To roll, or cause to roll, as a circular or spherical thing or as something on casters or low wheels: as, to trundle a hoop; to trundle a wheelbarrow; hence, to cause to move off with a rolling gait or pace.
- To cause to revolve; twirl: as, to trundle a mop.
Wiktionary
- n. A low bed on wheels that can be rolled underneath another bed.
- n. A small wheel or roller.
- n. this sense?)(Australia, slang) The process of defecating (compare a liquid trundle).
- v. transitive To wheel or roll, especially by pushing.
- v. transitive To (cause to) roll slowly and heavily on wheels.
- v. intransitive Move heavily (on wheels).
- v. transitive To move (physically).
- v. intransitive To move, often heavily or clumsily.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A round body; a little wheel.
- n. A lind of low-wheeled cart; a truck.
- n. A motion as of something moving upon little wheels or rollers; a rolling motion.
- n. A lantern wheel. See under Lantern.
- n. One of the bars of a lantern wheel.
- v. To roll (a thing) on little wheels.
- v. To cause to roll or revolve; to roll along.
- v. To go or move on small wheels.
- v. To roll, or go by revolving, as a hoop.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a low bed to be slid under a higher bed
- n. small wheel or roller
- v. move heavily
Etymologies
- From a variation of trendle, trindle. More at trindle. (Wiktionary)
- Variant of dialectal trendle, wheel, from Middle English, from Old English trendel, circle. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Truckle is from truckle in truckle bed a low bed on wheels that may be pushed under another bed; also called a trundle bed, in reference to the fact that the truckle bed on which the pupil slept was rolled under the large bed of the master.”
“Back in slavery time I recall the trundle bed that we children slept on.”
“Stretched upon a low child's bed, of the sort called trundle-bed in those days, which could be wheeled under the high-legged bed of the parents, lay the bridegroom, in his wedding-dress and gaitered shoes, with his steeple-crowned hat upon the faded calico quilt beside him, and his face as red as burning fever could make it.”
“[6.2] A trundle is a low bed, often on wheels, meant to be stored under a higher bed when not in use.”
“It is a small, harp-shaped instrument on legs, exceedingly coarse and clumsy in its construction, -- the case rough and unpolished, the legs like those of a kitchen table, with wooden castors such as were formerly used in the construction of cheap bedsteads of the "trundle" variety.”
“Us kids' slept under this bed on a 'trundle' bed so that at night my mother could just reach down and look after any one of us if we were sick or anything.”
“When we pull into the Wardman Park Marriott in Woodley Park, I scramble off first and watch the passengers trundle down the steps.”
The Washington Post: Tea Party road trip: What the movement wants -- and why
“But he certainly recognizes the danger to the world if America abdicates its military and economic leadership role, à la the Obama doctrine, as we trundle down the path we helped the European's lay.”
The Wall Street Journal: European Commission Doesn't Rule the EU on Its Own
“Once little steam engines used to trundle up and down the waterfront, depositing cargo for the freighters that lined our shores down to India Basin.”
The Huffington Post: Christopher Caen: Friday Footsteps: San Francisco Nostalgia
“And then, even as you are finally allowed to trundle your way back to steerage, your progress is impeded as the flight attendants hustle through the front of the plane to serve drinks even before take-off.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘trundle’.
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Film
jidaigeki, samurai, Kurosawa, action, comedy, drama, Bergman, Buñuel, surreal, rotoscope, melodrama, Cinerama and 333 more...
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I am : moving
Words to describe gait and movement.
walk, run, trot, jog, canter, gallop, skip, crawl, slink, slither, amble, trundle and 69 more...
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'no matter' matters
only the essence counts!
no matter
only matter
How mattering? (maddening?)
It is of no mind! (no mind)essentic, teleologing, resonance, sonorous, fire opal, Kagerou, maravilla, Otaniemi, whirr, chirr, yarn, trundle and 30 more...
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Words that delight me
tepid, perfunctory, trope, benign, inordinate, bewildering, ersatz, boon, delectable, apt, scuttlebutt, sequester and 398 more...
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vorpal's Words
parabiosis, penumbra, defenestrate, portmanteau, sturm und drang, perspicacious, quixotic, copacetic, obfuscate, inveigle, shadenfreude, cloister and 349 more...
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tranquill's Words
loquacious, unmitigated, trundle, ephemeral, vociferous, trapezoidal, liminal, obsequious, veracity, squash, onomatopoeia, oscillate and 267 more...
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Favorite Words of AWP13
We asked attendees who visited the Wordnik booth what their favorite words were, and these are what they told us. (AWP is an annual conference for writers and those in the writing world.)
cling, declivity, susurrus, caramel, cataract, please, fester, reverie, kerplunk!, defenestration, colonel, ocean and 174 more...
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Tuesday words
just the next words that come along
nasality, transignification, lapsarian, disciple, slanguage, atwitter, avast, ahoy, asleep, awake, hymnody, glissade and 573 more...
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Words of Whimsy & Grace
abecedary, addendum, ampersand, anachronism, avuncular, balderdash, barnacle, befuddle, behemoth, bejeebers, blabbermouth, blatherskite and 465 more...
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The Amulet of Samarkand
Words and phrases from Jonathan Stroud's The Amulet of Samarkand.
flunky, provenance, pare, rabbit in a covert, short shrift, bunker, trainers, tatty, lob, injunction, doss, bluster and 193 more...
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personal distaste
good grief, I'm getting irritable.
salvo, taboo, redoubtable, foment, intransigence, disingenuous, infarction, obviate, junta, aetiology, expedited, gerrymandering and 201 more...
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Wrapped up in books
I'm reading books. And there are words and phrases I come upon for the first time, or that are used with usages that are new to me.
So, this is just a plain list of those words. Don't expect ...hobble, mackerel, crone, cavort, hoyden, rheumy, scatter, hiss, recoil, trundle, shatter, flaxen and 200 more...
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fearraigh's Words
heretofore, seldom, cunt, calamity, overhead, phalanx, flunky, factotum, terrestrial, dormant, afflatus, periphery and 156 more...
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silverthread's Words
kerfuffle, ponder, hither, thither, persnickety, manhandle, fondle, snarky, trundle, truffle, fluffy, mangle and 90 more...
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merfee's Words
supple, dichotomy, relish, rhapsody, pneumonoultramicr..., embrace, ishmael, ebullient, recalcitrant, elegy, char, lugubrious and 522 more...
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Turning and Twisting Tours
words in the nature of double spirals
swift, swerve, swirl, swivel, swarm, swag, swank, swoop, swinge, swarf, spire, esparto and 361 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for trundle.

brtom I’ll clap a pair of horses to your chaise that shall trundle you off in a twinkling ...
Goldsmith, She Stoops, II Jan 10, 2007