van1
/van
/- A team of nine scenes-of-crime officers were dispatched in a police van with blacked-out windows to search the couple's home last night.
- The 23-year-old, who has not been named by police, was driving a sports car which hit a van on the wrong side of the road.
- A spokesperson said two robbers approached the driver of a security van that was transporting the cash, forced him to the ground and tied his hands.
- This explains why Edwardian ladies had so much luggage, deposited in the baggage van by a team of railway porters.
- In more recent years pooled cabooses for mainline trains meant only assigned local and branchline train crews kept their own van.
- In later years a new coach shop was built at John Street and the West Toronto shops concentrated on freight and service equipment including rebuilding wooden vans.
- New legislation for holiday vans came into force in recent weeks covering arrangements in caravan parks where vans are left on site for regular recreational use.
- The caravan park was crammed with campers, vans and tents.
Origin
Early 19th century: shortening of caravan.
caravan from Late Middle English:
The first use of caravan was for a group of people travelling together across a desert in Asia or North Africa. The word comes from French caravane, from Persian kārwān. The sense ‘covered horse-drawn wagon’ dates from the early 19th century; during this period it also described a third class ‘covered carriage’ on a railway. A caravanserai (late 16th century) is from Persian kārwānsarāy, literally a ‘caravan palace’: the word is either the same as the early sense of caravan or describes an inn with a central courtyard for travellers. Van (early 19th century) is a shortening of caravan, to which the word also sometimes refers. The earlier van (early 17th century), ‘the foremost part of a group of people’, found as part of the phrase in the van of, is also an abbreviated form, from vanguard (Late Middle English), whose first part was from Old French avant ‘before’ (compare vamp). The workman's white van is such a familiar sight that white van man has recently entered the language to mean an aggressive male van driver, or more widely an ordinary working man with forthright views.
Rhymes
van2
/van/- It made little difference what rank others in the van might bear.
- The men who they select from the whole force and station in the van are fleet of foot and fit admirably into cavalry action.
- After an attack by crossbowmen and infantry, the van of the French cavalry charged impetuously through their own infantry across the stream and up the slope on the other side.
- As always the hospitality and courtesy of Mayo people in the Sportlann was early in evidence with Sean Feeney, John Prenty and May Moran leading the van.
- Two economies have been strikingly in the van of this advance: the US and China.
- The Australian dollar was again in the van last night, rising 0.6% against a broadly weaker US dollar.
Origin
Early 17th century: abbreviation of vanguard.
van3
/van/- One golden crop has felt the winnowing van, another now is ready.
Origin
Late Middle English: dialect variant of fan1, probably reinforced by Old French van or Latin vannus.
van4
/van/Origin
1920s: abbreviation.