tram

Etymology 1

Possibly from Low German traam (“tram, shaft of a barrow”), from Middle Low German and Middle Dutch trame (“narrow shaft, beam”), said to be ultimately from a lost West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) word, probably from Proto-Germanic *drum (“splinter, fragment”), from Proto-Indo-European *térmn̥ (“peg, post, boundary”), cognate with Latin terminus. Compare Middle Low German treme; West Flemish traam, trame. The popular derivation from the surname of the English pioneer tramway builder Benjamin Outram (1764–1805) is false: the term pre-dated him.

noun

1. (Australia, Britain, rail transport) A passenger vehicle for public use that runs on tracks in the road (called a streetcar or trolley in North America).
   Lizzie and she got a dozen of large bottles and the loan of a basket and we got a currant pan and a half-pound of cooked ham in the shop next door and got on the tram for Whitehall. 1981, Brendan Behan, edited by Peter Fallon, After the Wake: Twenty-one Prose Works including Previously Unpublished Material (Classic Irish Fiction Series), Dublin: The O'Brien Press
2. A similar vehicle for carrying materials.
   Trams are a kind of sledge on which coals are brought from the place where they are hewn to the shaft. A tram has four wheels but a sledge is without wheels. 1789, John Brand, History and Antiquities of the Town and County of Newcastle upon Tyne: Including an Account of the Coal Trade of that Place, volume II, London: White, →OCLC, page 681
3. (US, rail transport) A people mover.
   The game Half-Life, for example, begins with a movie in which Gordon Freeman, the player's avatar, takes a tram ride through the Black Mesa research complex while a voice explains why he is there. 2013, Ernest Adams, “Storytelling”, in Fundamentals of Game Design, 3rd edition, [San Francisco, Calif.]: New Riders, page 215
4. (US) An aerial cable car.
   It's possible that my family took the tram to Roosevelt Island at some point and the experience embedded itself deep into my imagination where it mixed with other flights of fancy (pun intended) of flying through a Gotham-like city like Batman. 2014, Vivienne Gucwa, “Skylines”, in NY through the Lens, Cincinnati, Oh.: Print Books, page 129
5. (US) A train with wheels that runs on a road; a trackless train.
   Taking advantage of the VIP Experience at Universal Studios provides a more intimate and authentic look at the studio than does the regular studio tram tour. […] The VIP Experience gets you off the tram and behind the scenes: into sound stages, prop warehouses, and production facilities and on the sets of shows in production. 2005, Jan Friedman, Eccentric California, Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire: Bradt Travel Guides, page 124
   Each morning, still-groggy early-bird park-goers stumble from the parking-lot tram and head straight to La Brea's cafeteria-style Express for a caffeinated pick-me-up or a meal to start the day. 2007, Matthew Richard Poole, Frommer's Los Angeles 2008, Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, page 236
6. (British, historical) A car on a horse railway or tramway (horse trams preceded electric trams).
   The horse-drawn tram has vanished, and so will the trolley, and some eccentric Berlin writer in the twenties of the twenty-first century, wishing to portray our time, will go to a museum of technological history and locate a hundred-year-old streetcar, yellow, uncouth, with old-fashioned curved seats […] 1976 [1925], Vladimir Nabokov, “A Guide to Berlin”, in Details of a Sunset and Other Stories, McGraw-Hill, page 93
7. (obsolete) The shaft of a cart.
   What struck me with most astonishment, however, was the liberal manner of our fair driver, who made no scruple of taking a leap, with the reins in her hand, and seating herself dexterously upon the shafts (or, in Westmoreland phrase, the trams) of the cart. 1851, Thomas de Quincey, “William Wordsworth and Robert Southey”, in Literary Reminiscences; from the Autobiography of an English Opium-eater. […] In Two Volumes, volume II, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC, pages 14–15
8. (obsolete) One of the rails of a tramway.

verb

1. (intransitive) To operate, or conduct the business of, a tramway.
2. (intransitive) To travel by tram.
3. (transitive) To transport (material) by tram.
4. (US, transitive) To align a component in mechanical engineering or metalworking, particularly the head of a drill press.
   My invention consists of a frame suspended from another frame, on which the stone rests, and is leveled by screws from below, on which suspended frame are screws, which, being adjusted in the frame when the stone is first leveled by its face, serve afterward to level the stone at any time without removing the runner, and this lower frame serves for tramming the spindle; […] 29 October 1875, James T. Beckwith, “[Patent number] 171,974. Leveling and Tramming Apparatus for Millstones. James T. Beckwith, Cameron Mills, N.Y. [Filed Oct. 29, 1875.]”, in Specifications and Drawings of Patents Issued from the United States Patent Office for January, 1876: Patents No. 171,641 to 172,817; Reissues No. 6,831 to 6,885, Inclusive, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, published 1876, →OCLC, page 315, column 1

Etymology 2

From Spanish trama, or French trame (“weft”). Doublet of trama.

noun

1. (weaving) A silk thread formed of two or more threads twisted together, used especially for the weft, or cross threads, of the best quality of velvets and silk goods.
   The two types of silk of greatest interest to the hand weaver are known as Organzine and Tram. Organzine is a warp silk and is made from two or more single threads twisted together in the opposite direction from the original twist. Tram is a weft silk and it is made from two or more singles lightly twisted together. 1951, F[rederick] J[ohn] Christopher, “Materials and Quantities”, in Hand-loom Weaving, London: Frederick Muller, →OCLC
   Analysis of the seventeenth-century damask revealed that both its warp and weft were silk filaments; the organzine warp was dyed a dark blue and the tram silk of the weft was a somewhat lighter blue. 2011, Nancy C. Britton, “Reconciling Conservation and Interpretation: Strategies for Long-term Display of a Late Seventeenth-century Bed”, in Kathryn Gill, Dinah Eastop, editors, Upholstery Conservation: Principles and Practice, Abingdon, Oxon., New York, N.Y.: Routledge, page 64, column 2

verb

1. (weaving) To weave in this manner.