Friday, March 19, 2010 5:57:29 PM
A lorry is any large heavy-duty commercial road vehicle. Basically, anything that isn't a bus/coach and is bigger than a van.
You might also hear people from the UK calling something an `artic`. It`s short for `articulated lorry`, i.e. a lorry that bends around a joint rather than being wholly rigid. I think that`s what you`d call a semi-truck. Seperate cab and trailer sections, right?
I`ve no idea why you call them trucks and we call them lorries. So I`ll look it up.
Hmm...etymology of `lorry` is uncertain. Possibly from `lurry`, a word that fell out of use long ago and means `to pull`. `Truck` goes way back to an ancient Greek work meaning `wheel` and is an older term for a vehicle in the UK. `Truck` was replaced by `lorry` after the American revolution, which explains why `lorry` isn`t used there.