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^[1], 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.