drosky
Definitions
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- noun A low, four-wheeled, open carriage, formerly used in Poland and Russia, consisting of a kind of long, narrow bench, on which the passengers ride as on a saddle, with their feet reaching nearly to the ground. Other kinds of vehicles have been so called, esp. a kind of victoria drawn by one or two horses, and used as a public carriage in German cities.
Examples
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The covered carriage known as a drosky is a rather lumbering vehicle on four wheels.
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On a certain occasion I called a drosky-man and directed him to drive me to the United States Consulate.
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They drove in from neighbouring villages with their produce for sale in a kind of drosky, the carretella as it was called, with its single pony harnessed to the near side of the pole.
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Quarrelsome drosky drivers, incongruous mills, and the thousand trumperies of the place, were all forgotten in the perfect beauty of the scene — in the full, the joyous realisation of my ideas of Niagara.
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I knew nothing of this, of course, and on the penultimate day of the Congress, a Friday, as I was strolling home enjoying the morning after a strenuous late breakfast with Caprice, I was taken flat aback by Blowitz's moon face goggling at me from the window of a drosky drawn up near my hotel.
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Russki horse skin and bones which the boys "skookled" from the natives, that is, bought from the natives, became the most familiar sight on the quays, drawing the strange-looking but cleverly constructed drosky, or cart, bucking into his collar under the yoke and pulling with all his sturdy will, not minding the American "whoa" but obedient enough when the doughboy learned to sputter the Russki "br-r-r br-r-r."
The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919
Note
The word 'drosky' comes ultimately from a Russian word meaning 'shaft or pole of a carriage'.
