cattle car
Americannoun
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Railroads. stock car.
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Slang. a railroad passenger car providing little comfort and few amenities.
Etymology
Origin of cattle car
An Americanism dating back to 1860–65
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The Jewish girl and her family were first imprisoned in a ghetto on the outskirts of town and later forced onto a cattle car that took them to the Pechora concentration camp in 1941.
From Washington Times • Apr. 18, 2023
“When you get in a cattle car, you don’t really know what’s going to happen to you,” Ron said.
From Washington Post • Mar. 29, 2022
Her journey, and that of my parents, began by railroad, crammed in a cattle car in Latvia that eventually took them to a refugee camp in Austria.
From Seattle Times • Mar. 18, 2022
She recalls how the families cried and ran after the cattle car she and around 50 girls were packed into as it travelled to the spa town of Poprad.
From The Guardian • Mar. 25, 2017
The cattle car was crowded and unsanitary like all the rest, and there was no food or water but what we brought with us.
From "Prisoner B-3087" by Alan Gratz
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
