Spot the Frippet: truckle.

Truckle - well, it's just a superb word, isn't it.

A truckle basically a small wheel of the sort usually called a castor: the type of thing you get on chairs and fridges.

Endearingly, truckle has a special cheese meaning, too: a truckle of cheese is a smallish, more or less barrel-shaped, cheese. In England they're produced in some frankly horrifying and quite bizarre flavours: Cranberry and Tia Maria Cheddar, anyone? Because we already have a Cheddar and Dark Chocolate truckle, and Cheddar with Whisky and Ginger one as well, so some idiot's bound to make it before long.



Luckily good plain cheese comes in truckles, too:



Ah, you will be saying, but how about the sort of truckle that means to yield weakly? Is that something to do with cheese?

Well, sadly, no. It's to do with beds. And wheels. A truckle bed is a low bed on wheels that can be stored under an ordinary bed (if the space isn't clogged up with shoe boxes, winter duvets and a very old train set. This remote possibility explains why the bed sort of truckle largely went out of fashion.) 

Anyway, truckle meaning to yield comes from the fact that it was the underlings (literally) who ended up on the truckle bed, while the master had the high one.

Neat, isn't it.

Spot the Frippet: truckle. This word comes from the Anglo-Norman word trocle, from the Latin trochlea, the sheaf of a pulley.