trailer

American  

[trey-ler] / ˈtreɪ lər /

noun

• trailers
  plural

1. a large van or wagon drawn by an automobile, truck, or tractor, used especially in hauling freight by road.

2. Also called travel trailer.  a vehicle attached to an automobile and used as a mobile home or place of business, usually equipped with furniture, kitchen facilities, bathroom, etc.

3. a person or thing that trails.

4. a trailing plant.

5. a short promotional film composed of clips showing highlights of a movie due for release in the near future.

6. blank film at the end of a reel or strip of film, for winding off the film in a motion-picture camera or projector.

7. Ceramics. a can with a spout, used in slip trailing.

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trailer British  

/ ˈtreɪlə /

noun

1. a road vehicle, usually two-wheeled, towed by a motor vehicle: used for transporting boats, etc

2. the part of an articulated lorry that is drawn by the cab

3. a series of short extracts from a film, used to advertise it in a cinema or on television

4. a person or thing that trails

5. Also called (in Britain and certain other countries): caravan.  a large enclosed vehicle capable of being pulled by a car or lorry and equipped to be lived in

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• trailers
  plural

Etymology

Origin of trailer

First recorded in 1580–90; trail + -er ¹

Explanation

A trailer is a wheeled vehicle that can't move on its own — it needs to be pulled by a car, truck, or other vehicle. Some bike-riding parents tow their small children behind them in bicycle trailers. The trailer you might put a boat on, hitching it to your truck, trails behind the vehicle that's pulling it. Another meaning of trailer is a film preview or advertisement that theaters show before a movie. It might seem strange to call it a trailer when it comes first, but the earliest trailers, at the start of the 20th century, came after the movie, trailing it.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

trailer trailers

The trailer alone promises a scene-chewing buffet served by a cast stacked with British TV favorites, including “Ted Lasso” alumnus Nick Mohammed.

From Salon ● Sep. 4, 2026

HBO released another trailer for the series this week, giving fans a glimpse of the sorting-hat ceremony and Harry Potter’s mentor, Albus Dumbledore, who is played by John Lithgow.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2026

Woods was involved in a March 27 road accident in Florida in which his vehicle clipped a truck pulling a trailer and flipped on its side while attempting to pass on a residential road.

From Barron's ● Sep. 2, 2026

The second trailer reached almost half a billion views in its first day.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026

Home was, still is, a rusty old trailer stuck on the face of a mountain in Deep Water, in the heart of Fayette County.

From "Missing May" by Cynthia Rylant

Flatbed trucking, which utilizes trailers with no roof or sides to haul heavy and often odd-size equipment, are at the center of the data-center boom.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 28, 2026

Down the road from Oklo’s construction trailers at the Idaho National Lab, a campus of mostly Cold War-era buildings is abuzz with activity.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026

Sure, it might be annoying that studios are trying to pass off overly enthusiastic five-star Letterboxd reviews as legitimate film criticism in marketing on posters and in trailers.

From Salon ● Jul. 15, 2026

The horses will be taken in trailers to a corral in Modoc National Forest, where they’ll be readied for adoption.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 30, 2026

There were families sheltered in cheap tent trailers, aging hippies in Day-Glo vans, Charles Manson look-alikes sleeping in rusted-out Studebakers that hadn’t turned over since Eisenhower was in the White House.

From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer

Related Words

• mobile home