trunk

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The main woody axis of a tree.
• noun Architecture The shaft of a column.
• noun The body of a human or other vertebrate, excluding the head and limbs.
• noun The thorax of an insect.
• noun A proboscis, especially the long prehensile proboscis of an elephant.
• noun A main body, apart from tributaries or appendages.
• noun The main stem of a blood vessel or nerve apart from the branches.
• noun A trunk line.
• noun A chute or conduit.
• noun A watertight shaft connecting two or more decks.
• noun The housing for the centerboard of a vessel.
• noun Nautical Any of certain structures projecting above part of a main deck, as.
• noun A covering over the hatches of a ship.
• noun An expansion chamber on a tanker.
• noun A cabin on a small boat.
• noun A covered compartment for luggage and storage, generally at the rear of an automobile.
• noun A large packing case or box that clasps shut, used as luggage or for storage.
• noun Shorts worn for swimming or other athletics.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A long conduit or system with grids through which cotton is forced to be cleared of dust and refuse in its passage from the opener to the scutcher or picker.
• noun In ship-building, a large inclosed duct or passage through the decks or bulkheads of a vessel for coaling, ventilation, passing ammunition, etc.
• noun A trunk-line.
• Chief; main; principal: as, the trunk mains of a system of water or gas distribution; a trunk railway line.
• To lop off; curtail; truncate.
• To separate, as tin or copper ore, from the worthless veinstone, by the use of the trunk.
• noun The woody stem of a tree, from which the branches spring.
• noun In architecture, the shaft of a column; the part between the base and the capital. The term is sometimes used to signify the die or body of a pedestal. See cut under column.
• noun The main part or stem of a branching organ or system of organs, considered apart from its ramifications: as, the trunk of an artery, a vein, or a nerve; the trunk of a zoöphyte or coral. Also truncus.
• noun The human body or that of an animal without the head and limbs, and, in animals, the tail, or considered apart from these; in literary use, the body.
• noun A receptacle with stiff sides and a hinged cover or upper part, used especially for carrying clothes, toilet articles, etc., for a journey.
• noun In fishing, an iron hoop with a bag, used to catch crustaceans.
• noun A tube of various kinds and uses.
• noun A telescope.
• noun A pea- or bean-shooter; a long tube through which peas, pellets, etc., were driven by the force of the breath.
• noun A boxed passage for air to or from a blast-apparatus or blowing-engine; an air-shaft.
• noun A boxed passage up or down which grain or flour is conveyed in an elevator or mill.
• noun A box-tube used to send attle or rubbish out of a mine, or to convey coal to a wagon or heap, broken quartz from a mill to the stamps, etc.
• noun A long, narrow trough which was formerly used in Cornwall in dressing copper- and tin-slimes.
• noun A wooden box or pipe of square section in which air is conveyed in a mine.
• noun A kibble.
• noun A trough to convey water from a race to a water-wheel, etc.; a flume; a penstock.
• noun In trunk-engines, a section of pipe attached to a piston and moving longitudinally with it, its diameter being sufficient to allow one end of the connecting-rod to be attached to the crank and the other end directly to the piston, thus dispensing with an intermediate rod: used in marine engines for driving propellers, also in some stationary steam-engines, and extensively in caloric engines.
• noun A proboscis; a long snout; especially, the proboscis of the elephant; less frequently, the proboscis of other animals, as butterflies, flies, mosquitos and other gnats, and certain mollusks and worms. See the applications of proboscis.
• noun plural Trunk-hose.
• noun In hat-manuf., the tube or directing passage in a machine for forming the bodies of hats, which confines the air-currents, and guides the fibers of fur from the picker to the cone.
• noun plural Same as troll-madam or pigeonholes.