Truck at first meant market-garden produce; then it came to mean stuff in general, including “doctor-stuff.” SPUN TRUCK is knitting work.
1784. He has also provided a large Room, with a Stove, for his Customers to lodge in, and deposit their Market-Truck.—Advt., Maryland Journal, Dec. 14.
1794. It is a truck trade that is proposed [between the U.S. and the West Indies].—Gazette of the U.S., Phila., Jan. 6.
1825.
| She had a heap o’ truck, as bumpkins say, | |
| High fed and fattened for the coming day. | |
New-Harmony Gazette, Nov. 30, p. 80/1. |
1829. A garden, or, as the people call it, a truck patch, was also prepared, and sowed, and planted.—T. Flint, ‘George Mason,’ p. 33 (Boston). (Italics in the original.)
1833. [As a veteran hunter remarked,] it took a powerful chance of truck, to feed such a heap of folks.—James Hall, ‘Legends of the West,’ p. 9 (Phila.). (Italics in the original.)
1835. Mrs. R. I’ve hearn of many folks bein’ cured in that way. And what did they do for Lucy’s cough, Mis’ Barney? Mrs. B. Oh dear me, they gin’ her a powerful chance o’ truck. I reckon, first and last, she took at least a pint o’ lodimy.—A. B. Longstreet, ‘Georgia Scenes,’ p. 211.
1850. See PLUMB.
1850. Doctor … ef you’re a mineral fissishun [physician], and this truck has got calomy in it, you needn’t be afeard of salavatin me.—H. C. Lewis (‘Madison Tensas’), ‘Odd Leaves,’ p. 155 (Phila.).
1851. Jim Bell … had visited town, for the purpose of buying two bunches “of No. 8, spun truck.”—J. J. Hooper, ‘Widow Rugby’s Husband,’ &c., p. 72.
1853. [A man] poked his head into a country-store where I was ‘loafing’ at the time, and yelled out the very intelligent question: ‘Mister, do you take plunder here for your spun truck?’—Knick. Mag., xlii. 211 (Aug.).
1857. Amusing myself at the chaffering of the women exchanging their ‘wool-socks,’ bees’-wax, tow-linen, and other domestic manufactures, for ‘spun truck,’ apron-check, dye-stuff, and so on.—Id., l. 433 (Nov.).
1862. School larnin is mity poor truck to put into a feller’s hed onless he’s got a good deal of brains there.—Seba Smith, ‘Major Jack Downing,’ Dec. 6.
1890. “All kinds of truck,” to use the phrase with which the Western man designates a variety of possessions, was heaped in the big army-wagon by the willing soldiers, and the women and children mounted upon their property.—Mrs. Custer, ‘Following the Guidon,’ p. 109 (N.Y.).
1902. Sally’s a-goin’ to fry some o’ this truck fer me, an’ I’m as hungry as a bear.—W. N. Harben, ‘Abner Daniel,’ p. 77.
