trunk

From Middle English trunke, borrowed from Old French tronc (“alms box, tree trunk, headless body”), from Latin truncus (“a stock, lopped tree trunk”), from truncus (“cut off, maimed, mutilated”). For the verb, compare French tronquer, and see truncate.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /tɹʌŋk/
• (US) IPA^(key): /tɹʌŋk/, [t͡ʃɹʌŋk]

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌŋk

trunk (plural trunks)

1. (heading, biological) Part of a body.
   1. The usually single, more or less upright part of a tree, between the roots and the branches: the tree trunk.
   2. The torso.
   3. The conspicuously extended, mobile, nose-like organ of an animal such as a sengi, a tapir or especially an elephant. The trunks of various kinds of animals might be adapted to probing and sniffing, as in the sengis, or be partly prehensile, as in the tapir, or be a versatile prehensile organ for manipulation, feeding, drinking and fighting as in the elephant.
2. (heading) A container.
   1. A large suitcase, chest, or similar receptacle for carrying or storing personal possessions, usually with a hinged, often domed lid, and handles at each end, so that generally it takes two persons to carry a full trunk.
      • 1915, G[eorge] A. Birmingham [pseudonym; James Owen Hannay], chapter I, in Gossamer, New York, N.Y.: George H. Doran Company, OCLC 5661828, page 01:

        There is an hour or two, after the passengers have embarked, which is disquieting and fussy. Mail bags, so I understand, are being put on board. Stewards, carrying cabin trunks, swarm in the corridors.

   2. A box or chest usually covered with leather, metal, or cloth, or sometimes made of leather, hide, or metal, for holding or transporting clothes or other goods.
      • William Shakespeare (c.1564–1616)

        locked up in chests and trunks

   3. (US, Canada, automotive) The luggage storage compartment of a sedan/saloon style car; a boot
      • 2005, Jordan Houston, Darnell Carlton, Paul Beauregard, Premro Smith, Marlon Goodwin, David Brown, and Willie Hutchinson (lyrics), “Stay Fly”, in Most Known Unknown‎, Sony BMG, performed by Three 6 Mafia (featuring Young Buck, 8 Ball, and MJG):

        I'm a stunt; ride in the car with some bump in the trunk.

3. (heading) A channel for flow of some kind.
   1. (US, telecommunications) A circuit between telephone switchboards or other switching equipment.
   2. A chute or conduit, or a watertight shaft connecting two or more decks.
   3. A long, large box, pipe, or conductor, made of plank or metal plates, for various uses, as for conveying air to a mine or to a furnace, water to a mill, grain to an elevator, etc.
   4. (archaic) A long tube through which pellets of clay, peas, etc., are driven by the force of the breath. A peashooter
      • James Howell (c.1594–1666)

        He shot sugarplums at them out of a trunk.

   5. (mining) A flume or sluice in which ores are separated from the slimes in which they are contained.
4. (software engineering) In software projects under source control: the most current source tree, from which the latest unstable builds (so-called "trunk builds") are compiled.
5. The main line or body of anything.

   the trunk of a vein or of an artery, as distinct from the branches

   1. (transport) A main line in a river, canal, railroad, or highway system.
   2. (architecture) The part of a pilaster between the base and capital, corresponding to the shaft of a column.
6. A large pipe forming the piston rod of a steam engine, of sufficient diameter to allow one end of the connecting rod to be attached to the crank, and the other end to pass within the pipe directly to the piston, thus making the engine more compact.
7. Shorts used for swimming (swim trunks).

• (luggage storage compartment of a sedan/saloon style car): boot (UK, Aus), dicky (India)
• (upright part of a tree): tree trunk
• (nose of an elephant): proboscis

• (a large suitcase; a chest for holding goods): footlocker

• tree trunk
• trunk line, trunkline
• trunk road
• trunky

• trunk in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• trunk in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

trunk (third-person singular simple present trunks, present participle trunking, simple past and past participle trunked)

1. (obsolete) To lop off; to curtail; to truncate.
   • Spenser

     Out of the trunked stock.

2. (mining) To extract (ores) from the slimes in which they are contained, by means of a trunk.

• K-turn