trommel, noun
- Origin:
- AfrikaansShow more Afrikaans, box, tin.
1. A tin trunk or storage box, especially a medicine chest (see also huis-apotheek), or the trunk in which a soldier stores his possessions. Also (occasionally) dimunitive form trommeltjie [see -ie].
1926 P. Smith Beadle (1929) 49Andrina carried a small, square, gaily painted tin canister, called a ‘trommeltje’, with padlock and key attached. In the trommeltje, in which the rusks were to be put, were little red cinnamon cakes for the miller’s children.
1958 E.H. Burrows Hist. of Medicine 190Each household had its own medicine-chest or trommel, usually the ready-made huis-apotheek of the Cape Town chemists.
1975 J.H. Picard in Eng. Usage in Sn Afr. Vol.6 No.1, 36A tin trunk is a trommel and the mess tray or ‘dixy’ is a varkpan.
1980 Sunday Times 18 May (caption)No, sonny, you’re not meant to keep your teddy bear in your trommel.
1982 Sunday Times 29 Aug. (Mag. Sect.) 29What’s three extra meals for 10 people? She simply digs deeper into her ‘trommel’.
1987 Fair Lady 21 Jan. 144Welcome to..the eclectic English/Afrikaans language of survival that’s armyspeak...With two brothers, there was no way to avoid it. Troopies, trommels and the lieut infiltrated their English.
1992 H. Hurwitz Informant, JohannesburgI have seen pictures of trommels of Dutch medicines used in the 2nd Anglo-Boer War.
2. Mining. [Perhaps from U.S. English (adaptation of German trommel drum), reinforced by Afrikaans.] A cylindrical screen or sieve.
c1936 S. & E. Afr. Yr Bk & Guide 395The broken ore from the shaft is screened by steel gratings known as grizzlies, the portion passing through being sent direct to the stamp mill. The remainder is delivered into revolving trommels, where it is washed and is then discharged on to revolving tables or travelling belts for sorting.
A tin trunk or storage box, especially a medicine chest (see also huis-apotheek), or the trunk in which a soldier stores his possessions. Also (occasionally) dimunitive form trommeltjiesee -ie.
A cylindrical screen or sieve.
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