truckle

• troccle (obsolete)

From Middle English trokel, trocle, trookyl, from Anglo-Norman trocle, 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.

• Rhymes: -ʌkəl

truckle (plural truckles)

1. A small wheel; a caster or pulley.
2. A small wheel of cheese.
3. A truckle bed.

• truckle bed

truckle (third-person singular simple present truckles, present participle truckling, simple past and past participle truckled)

1. To roll or move upon truckles, or casters; to trundle.
2. (intransitive) To sleep in a truckle bed.

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.

truckle (third-person singular simple present truckles, present participle truckling, simple past and past participle truckled)

1. (intransitive) To act in a submissive manner; to fawn, submit to a superior.
   • 1869, Louisa May Alcott, Little Women:

     "Why in the world should you spend your money, worry your family, and turn the house upside down for a parcel of girls who don't care a sixpence for you? I thought you had too much pride and sense to truckle to any mortal woman just because she wears French boots and rides in a coupe," said Jo, who, being called from the tragic climax of her novel, was not in the best mood for social enterprises. "I don't truckle, and I hate being patronized as much as you do!" returned Amy indignantly, for the two still jangled when such questions arose.

   • 1899, William Graham Sumner, “The Conquest of the United States by Spain”, in War and Other Essays, Yale, published 1911, page 302:

     There is no doubt […] that truckling to popularity is the worst political vice.

   • Norris

     Religion itself is forced to truckle to worldly policy.

• truckler

• Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967