trailer
part of speech
noun (a trailer, trailers); verb (trailer, trailers, trailered, trailering — rare)
meaning for a pupil
1) A trailer is a wheeled box or platform pulled behind a car, truck or tractor to carry things or animals. tree →
2) A trailer is a short video showing bits of a film, show or game to make people want to watch it. tree →
3) (US, Canada) A trailer is a caravan or a mobile home that people live or holiday in. tree →
4) (verb, rare) To trailer something is to carry it on a trailer or to advertise it with a short clip. tree →
sense in the lessons
In everyday life: towing a boat or horses, and watching film trailers before a cinema film. In maths problems a truck and trailer may carry loads, so its weight is added to the truck's. In stories about the USA, a «trailer park» is a place where people live in mobile homes. Phrases: «horse trailer», «film trailer», «movie trailer», «trailer park».
examples
- Dad hooked the trailer onto the back of the car. tree →
- The horse stepped carefully into the trailer. tree →
- We watched the trailer for the new cartoon film. tree →
- The trailers before the movie lasted twenty minutes. tree →
- My cousin in Texas lives in a trailer near the lake. tree →
- The tractor pulled a trailer full of hay. tree →
- A truck weighs 3 tonnes and its trailer weighs 2 tonnes, so together they weigh 5 tonnes. tree →
note
Countable: «a trailer», «two trailers». In the UK people say «caravan» for a holiday trailer; in the USA «trailer» or «RV». Comes from «trail», to drag behind. A film trailer comes before the film even though the word sounds like «after» – long ago they were shown after it.
In the corpora
- Trailers show the most exciting or scary bits squeezed together, so a trailer can feel scarier than the whole film.
- In Texas, Josiah's family lives in a trailer (a mobile home).
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «trailer» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.