flying boxcar

noun

, Informal.

1. a large airplane designed to carry cargo.

Word History and Origins

Origin of flying boxcar¹

First recorded in 1930–35

Example Sentences

The final pieces of a C-119 “Flying Boxcar” aircraft purchased by the Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum have made it to Columbus, the culmination of months of planning and several trips to Wyoming to pick up parts of the disassembled plane.

From Washington Times

The C-119, also known as the “Flying Boxcar” due to the unusual shape of its fuselage, was in service with the U.S.

From Washington Times

Crewmen gave it a host of nicknames, among them “the Flying Brick,” “the Flying Boxcar,” and “the Constipated Lumberer,” a play on Consolidated Liberator.

From Literature

In intimate portraits of birds, like tiny sandpipers and the “flying boxcar” of a bar-tailed godwit, and in personal anecdotes of his birding adventures, Mr. Cross, 85, describes how he spent the first half of his life oblivious to birds only to become one of their most ardent photographers and advocates in the second half.

From New York Times

His specially equipped C-119 Flying Boxcar, patrolling a 12,000-sq.-mi. patch of the Pacific near Hawaii, had tried to snare Discoverer XIII's descending instrument capsule, coming from outer space, in midair.

From Time Magazine Archive