buckboard

English

a buckboard

Etymology

buck + board

Noun

buckboard (plural buckboards)

  1. A simple, distinctively American four-wheeled horse-drawn wagon designed for personal transport as well as for transporting animal fodder and domestic goods, often with a spring-mounted seat for the driver.
    • 1918, Sinclair Lewis, “Afterglow”, in I'm a Stranger Here Myself and Other Stories, New York: Dell, published 1962, pages 79–80:
      In a few hours he would actually be at Highwater. Perhaps there would be a real buckboard at the station; perhaps the first man he saw would be some old-timer who would remember that it was McCumber who had first blazed a way through Highwater County.
    • 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter VI, in Capricornia, page 85:
      [] he turned to Differ and said in an employer's tone, "Got everything ready?"
      "On the buckboard," said Differ in the tone of a Capricornian employee.
    • 1987, Toni Morrison, Beloved, New York: Vintage, published 2004, page 106:
      When he turned his head, aiming for a last look at Brother, turned it as much as the rope that connected his neck to the axle of a buckboard allowed, and, later on, when they fastened the iron around his ankles and clamped the wrists as well, there was no outward sign of trembling at all.
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