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Glite Dictionary
🎵 A music player 🍽️ A rotating tray 🚂 A train platform
turntable

turntable

1 5.1
A round platform that turns trains so they face a different direction
  • noun
  • /ˈtɜrnˌteɪbəl/
  • Specialized
translation icon : plataforma giratoria
  • DUKE carefully steps off the turntable. GONZO, eyes staring blindly ahead, squinting in fear and confusion, rooted to the spot, is carried away.
  • car turntable

Examples

  • And the way he did that was he had an empty room in the warehouse and he set up this piece of steel on a turntable that spun about this fast.

  • GONZO trembles with fear and walks to the edge of the turntable.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • They'd fall apart on the turntable.

    Sea of Love (1989)

  • The skating rink is a unique shape; skaters glide around the Historic District's famous train turntable in a circle.

    Blog text (17)

  • I spotted Monaghan in his usual garb of derby hat, vest, watch chain, and jumper, watching the roundhouse hostler spinning our engine on the turntable.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • The train was carefully positioned on the turntable to change direction after arriving at the station.

  • At the railway museum, visitors can watch as the old locomotives rotate on the historic turntable.

  • The worker operated the turntable to move the boxcar onto a different track during the transition.

Surface Forms

turntable singular
turntables plural

Morphology

turntable = turn + table (transparent) = turn + table

The railway sense is a straightforward compound: a platform (table) that turns to rotate locomotives.

Etymology

Turntable comes from turn ('to move around') and table ('flat surface'), so it means a flat thing that turns. On railways, a turntable is a round platform that turns a train so it can face the other way.