Trolley

How to spell trolley

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce trolley

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does trolley mean?

1. nounA small wheeled frame or basket pushed by hand for carrying goods, shopping, or food.
2. nounAn electric passenger vehicle that runs on rails in the street, drawing power from an overhead wire.

Trolley in a sentence

• She loaded the groceries into the trolley and headed for the checkout.

• Tourists rode the historic trolley up the steep hill to the lookout.

• The waiter wheeled a dessert trolley between the tables.

• The city restored an old trolley line through the downtown core.

Where does trolley come from?

Language of origin: French

Trolley first appears in English dialect in the early 1800s and is generally traced to the verb 'troll', which once meant to roll or to trundle something along, and behind that lies an Old French troller, meaning to wander or to ramble about while hunting. The word began life describing all sorts of small wheeled trucks and carriages that could be pushed or rolled, and the rolling sense is exactly why the spelling keeps that double 'l' and the soft '-ey' ending. By the late nineteenth century it had attached itself to the grooved wheel or pole that ran along an overhead wire to draw power for an electric tram, which is how the American 'trolley car' got its name. In Britain the same word settled instead on the pushed wheeled frame used for shopping or for carrying tea and dishes. The shared idea across every sense is something that rolls, and remembering 'roll' helps fix both the double 'l' and the fact that it is not spelled with a final '-y' alone.

How the word is built

• troll (to roll, trundle)
• -ey (noun suffix)