trundle wheel

A lantern-wheel (q. v.). trunk, *truncke, *trunke, s . [Fr. tronc=the trunk, stock, stem, or body of a tree, a trunk, a headle body, a poor-man's box in church, from Lat. truncum, acc us. of truncus =a trunk, stem, trunk of the body, from truncus =maimed, mutilated; O. Lat. tronc us ; Sp., Port. & Ital. tronco .] [TRUNCATE, TRUNCHEON.] I. Ordinary Language : 1. The woody stem of trees, as of the oak, ash, elm, .; that part of the plant which, springing immediately from the earth, rises in a vertical direction above the surface of the soil and forms the principal bulk of the individual, sending out branches whose structure is similar to that of itself; the stem or body of a tree apart from its roots and limbs; stock, stalk. 2. The body of an animal apart from the limbs, or after the limbs have been separated from it. "Who trembled, trunk and limbs, like some huge oak By a fierce tempest shaken." Words worth: Excursion , bk. vi. 3. The main body of anything considered relatively to its ramifications or branches; as, the trunk of an artery, the trunk of a line of railway. 4. The proboscis or snout of an elephant; a similar or analogous organ in other animals, as the proboscis of an insoct, by which it sucks up the blood of animals or the juice of vegetables. 5. A tube, usually of wood, to convey air, dust, broken matter, grain, .; as (1) An air-trunk to a mine or tunnel. (2) A dust-trunk from a cotton-cleaner, smut machine, or factory floor. IMG:content-1499.jpg:[blocks in formation] II. Technically : 1. Anat .: The human body with the head and limbs omitted. Its axis of support is the vertebral column, its framework the ribs, and its most important organs the heart and lungs. 2. Bot. In the same sense as I. 1. 3. Arch.: The shaft or body of a column; the part between the base and capital. (Sometimes applied to the dado or body of a pedestal.) 4. Fishing : An iron hoop with a bag to catch crustaceans. 5. Hydr .: A flume or penstock (q. v.). 6. Mining: (1) A flume. (2) An upcast or downcast air-pa age in a mine. (3) The box-tube in which attle or rubbish is sent out of the mine. (4) A wooden spout for water or the pipe of the draining-pump. 7. Pneumatics : A boxed pa age for air to or from a blast apparatus or blowing-engine, in smelting, or ventilation of mines and buildings; an airshaft. 8. Steam : A tubular piston-rod used to enable the connecting-rod to be jointed directly to the piston or to a very short piston-rod, so as to save room in marine steam-engines. The width of the trunk must be sufficient to give room for the lateral motion of the connecting-rod. *To speak in or through a trunk : To speak through a tube. "And this fellow waits on him now through a tube, in tennis-court socks, or slippers soled with wool; and they speak to each other in a trunk."-Ben Jonson: Silent Woman , i. 1. Cunning ham, in a note to the pa age cited above, quotes Montaigne: "There are a people where no one speaks to the king, except his wife and children, but through a trun!.." trunk-back, s . Zool .: A popular name for any individual of the genus Sphargis (q. v.).