different between tonneau vs trunk

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French tonneau.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /t??no?/

Noun

tonneau (plural tonneaus or tonneaux)

1. The rear body or compartment of some types of motor vehicle, especially one containing seats for passengers.
   • 1920, Peter B. Kyne, The Understanding Heart, Ch.XV:

     From the tonneau of Bentley's car the sheriff and Garland removed the groceries and sick-room supplies, stowing them in the kyacks.

   • 1982 March, How to improve your pickup?s mileage, Popular Mechanics, p.102:

     The first step was to install a tonneau cover.

2. An old-style open passenger vehicle with a tonneau (rear compartment with seats).
3. Clipping of tonneau cover.
   • 1982 March, How to improve your pickup?s mileage, Popular Mechanics, p.102:

     The first step was to install a tonneau cover. Now most pickup tonneaus snap onto studs screwed into the bodywork. The snaps rust, the holes in the truck rust and the tonneau—because the snaps are spaced every foot or so along the edges—eventually rips around the snaps.

   • 2003, Bill Piggott, Original Triumph TR4/4A/5/6: The Restorer?s Guide, unnumbered page:

     Tonneaux were made of the same plasticised canvas material used for soft-tops.

French

Etymology

tonne +? -eau

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /t?.no/

Noun

tonneau m (plural tonneaux)

1. barrel; round vessel made from staves bound with a hoop
2. register ton (100 cubic feet)
3. barrel roll

Derived terms

• du même tonneau

Further reading

• “tonneau” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Anagrams

• énouant

Italian

Etymology

From French tonneau.

Noun

tonneau m (plural tonneau)

1. barrel roll

English

Etymology

From Middle English tronke, 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. Doublet of truncus and tronk.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /t???k/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /t???k/, [t?????k], [t???k]
• Rhymes: -??k

Noun

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.

      • 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.
   3. (US, Canada, automotive) The luggage storage compartment of a sedan/saloon style car; a boot
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
      • 13 March, 1623, James Howell, "To the Lord Viscount Col. from Madrid" in Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ

        He shot Sugar Plums 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.
   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. (in the plural) Short for swimming trunks.

Synonyms

• (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

Hyponyms

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

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

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

Verb

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

1. (transitive, obsolete) To lop off; to curtail; to truncate.
2. (transitive, mining) To extract (ores) from the slimes in which they are contained, by means of a trunk.
3. (telecommunications) To provide simultaneous network access to multiple clients by sharing a set of circuits, carriers, channels, or frequencies.

Anagrams

• K-turn