trolleys


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trolleys

Also: trollies
(British) underpants or knickers
Abused, Confused, & Misused Words by Mary Embree Copyright © 2007, 2013 by Mary Embree

trol·ley

also trol·ly  (trŏl′ē)
n. pl. trol·leys also trol·lies
1. A streetcar.
2. 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.
3. A small truck or car operating on a track and used in a mine, quarry, or factory for conveying materials.
4. A wheeled carriage, cage, or basket that is suspended from and travels on an overhead track.
5. Chiefly British A light cart designed to be moved by hand.
tr. & intr.v. trol·leyed, trol·ley·ing, trol·leys also trol·lied (-lēd) or trol·ly·ing or trol·lies (-lēz)
To convey (passengers) or travel by trolley.

[Probably from troll.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

trolleys

(ˈtrɒlɪz)
pl n
(Clothing & Fashion) slang men's underpants
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014
Collins Multilingual Translator © HarperCollins Publishers 2009
References in classic literature ?
Then he showed them the wards one after another, the storeroom, the linen room, then the heating stove of a new pattern, then the trolleys, which would make no noise as they carried everything needed along the corridors, and many other things.
The motor-cars that went by northward and southward grew more and more powerful and efficient, whizzed faster and smelt worse, there appeared great clangorous petrol trolleys delivering coal and parcels in the place of vanishing horse-vans, motor-omnibuses ousted the horse-omnibuses, even the Kentish strawberries going Londonward in the night took to machinery and clattered instead of creaking, and became affected in flavour by progress and petrol.
Evidently it had arrived on the scene in the nick of time-- after the telegraph and before the trolleys and electric lights.
The staves of the barrel and the wheels of the trolley were smeared with a dark liquid, and the whole air was heavy with the smell of creasote.
The mouth of that mine goes right into the face of the cliff, and they used to put us in a bucket and run us over on a trolley and shoot us into the shaft.
Wouverman was not ready for Disko's prices till Disko, sure that the "We're Here" was at least a week ahead of any other Gloucester boat, had given him a few days to swallow them; so all hands played about the streets, and Long Jack stopped the Rocky Neck trolley, on principle, as he said, till the conductor let him ride free.
He and Harvey went out on the trolley to East Gloucester, where they tramped through the bayberry-bushes to the lighthouse, and lay down on the big red boulders and laughed themselves hungry.
Yet I had come in the degenerate day of trolley, bicycle and rural delivery, when communication was easy between the scattered mountain villages, and the bigger towns in the valleys, such as Bettsbridge and Shadd's Falls, had libraries, theatres and Y.
In front of them a porter pushes a trolley piled high with trunks, wraps, and gun-cases.
Now, sitting in the trolley car, they realized that they were on their way to the home of it--that they had traveled all the way from Lithuania to it.
The block-and-tackle, running like a trolley on the overhead track, made it possible for the assistant to seize his tail and drag him through the air till he was above the chair.
The Consolidated operation went through several name and route changes over the years and had become the Worcester Regional Transit Authority by the time it decided to abandon trolleys in favor of buses in 1945.