And how came you, sir, to be thus housed in a trunkless head?
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert.
The trunkless hands then placed the dishes on the table, and the prince and white cat seated themselves.
The trunkless head was a mile off, apparently,—but it was coming,—and what was he to do?
The trunkless hands then placed the dishes on the table, and the Prince and White Cat seated themselves at it.
Dr. Johnson relates the impression which the sight of these trunkless heads made upon him.
And the three chiefs (one on either side the trunkless head that the third bore aloft) whispered, "We are avenged!"
What knowest thou of the runes of old, whispered by the trunkless skull to the mighty Odin?
Ere another breath passed his lips, a ghastly and trunkless face was raised on high—Walter de Montreal was no more!
The trunkless hands then placed the dishes on the table, and the prince and white cat seated themselves at it.
mid-15c., "box, case," from Old French tronc "alms box in a church" (12c.), also "trunk of a tree, trunk of the human body," from Latin truncus, originally "mutilated, cut off." The meaning "box, case" is likely to be from the notion of the body as the "case" of the organs. English acquired the other two senses of the Old French in late 15c.: "main stem of a tree" and "torso of a human body." The sense of "luggage compartment of a motor vehicle" is from 1930. The use in reference to an elephant's snout is from 1560s, perhaps from confusion with trump (short for trumpet). Railroad trunk line is attested from 1843; telephone version is from 1889.
The body excluding the head and limbs.
The main stem of a blood vessel or nerve apart from the branches.
A large collecting lymphatic vessel.