Etymology

From street +‎ carCategory:English compound terms#STREETCAR. Coined before the era of motorcars, the term emphasized a type of car on rails that were in the street (along with foot traffic, wagons, and carriages) rather than on a separate, dedicated railroad, as a railcar is.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈstɹitˌkɑɹ/Category:English 2-syllable words#STREETCARCategory:English terms with IPA pronunciation#STREETCAR

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

  Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#STREETCAR

Noun

streetcar (plural streetcars)Category:English lemmas#STREETCARCategory:English nouns#STREETCARCategory:English countable nouns#STREETCARCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#STREETCARCategory:Pages with entries#STREETCARCategory:Pages with 1 entry#STREETCAR

1. (Canada, USCategory:Canadian English#STREETCARCategory:American English#STREETCAR) A tram or light rail vehicle, usually a single car but sometimes multiple cars attached together, operating on city streets; a trolley car.

   Synonym: (UK) tram

   • 1878, Henry James, An International Episode‎:

     Here, outside, in the light and the shade and the heat, there was a great tinkling of the bells of innumerable streetcars, and a constant strolling and shuffling and rustling of many pedestrians, a large proportion of whom were young women in Pompadour-looking dresses.Category:English terms with quotations#STREETCAR

   • 1905 April–October, Upton Sinclair, chapter XX, in The Jungle, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 26 February 1906, →OCLC:

     Tired as he felt at night, and dark and bitter cold as it was in the morning, Jurgis generally chose to walk; at the hours other workmen were traveling, the streetcar monopoly saw fit to put on so few cars that there would be men hanging to every foot of the backs of them and often crouching upon the snow-covered roof.Category:English terms with quotations#STREETCAR

   • 1908, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “Hostages to Momus”, in The Gentle Grafter, New York, N.Y.: The McClure Company, →OCLC:

     […] but after all there's nothing less displeasing to me than a beefsteak smothered in mushrooms on a balcony in sound of the Broadway streetcars, with a hand-organ playing down below, and the boys hollering extras about the latest suicide.Category:English terms with quotations#STREETCAR

Further reading

• tram on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• rescatter, scatterer, tarcretes Category:en:Rail transportation#STREETCAR