Reliving History

Reliving History next month is all about re-enactments, living history and the people within the hobby. It is also about photography of the people and events that forms the public community for the group. Enjoy the site, the photographs and the stories.

T is for Truck

Submitted by david d on Fri, 12/05/2008 - 20:26

Tote: to carry.

  • 1833: In our day, merchants were well enough satisfied to tote their plunder upon mules and pack horses. James Hall, Legends of the West, p.49
  • 1833: I brought at four turns as much as I could tote, and put it on the bank. Sketches of Davy Crockett, p.103
  • 1851: Thar goes as clever a feller as ever toted an ugly head. Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs, p.140
  • 1852: I heard it said when I was a child, that it was allowable to make the Devil tote brick to build a church. Mr. Stanley, North Carolina, House of Reps., Congressional Globe, June 12, p.693

Trace: a trail or path.

  • 1829: George offered to take the trace through the woods to the bank of the Mississippi, where the physician resided. Timothy Flint, George Mason, p.41
  • 1833: On either side was the thick forest, sometimes grown up with underbrush to the margin of the trace. James Hall, Legends of the West, p.187
  • 1834: The trace had been rudely cut out by some of the earlier travellers through the Indian country, merely traced out, -and hence perhaps the name -by a blaze, or white spot, made upon the trees by hewing them from the bark. W.G. Simms, Guy Rivers, p.62

Truck, spun truck: garden produce intended for market. Later, it came to mean any quantity of "stuff."

  • 1833: [It was remarked that] it took a powerful chance of truck to feed such a heap of folks. James Hall, Legends of the West, p.9
  • 1840: And what did they do for Lucy's cough, Mis' Barney? 0 dear me, they giv her a powerful chance o' truck. I reckon, first and last, she took at least a pint o' lodimy. A.B. Longstreet, Georgia Scenes, p.193
  • 1857: Women exchanging their wool-socks, bees' wax, tow-linen, etc., for spun truck, apron check, dye-stuff, and so on. Knickerbocker Magazine, August
  • 1862: School larnin is mighty poor truck to put into a feller's head, onless he's got a good deal of brains there. Seba Smith, Major Jack Downing, December 6

Tuckered out: exhausted.

  • 1853: Set us to runnin, an I could tucker him; but he would beat me to jumpin, all holler. Turnover, A Tale of New Hampshire, p.59
  • 1857: You got all tuckered out, playin'and runnin'out doors, and would come in with your eyes lookin' as heavy as lead. J.G. Holland, The Bay Path, p.59
»