Galamander
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A customized horse- or ox-drawn stoneboat or wagon once used for hauling stone from quarries, with smaller front wheels and larger rear ones, and a derrick to lift blocks of stone on and off the vehicle. Maine, historical
"Down at Vinalhaven, Me., which has just been celebrating its sesquicentennial, they used to use what they called a "galamander" to carry heavy stones from the granite quarries. The "galamander" is a combination stone-boat on wheels and a derrick."
Example
More examples"Down at Vinalhaven, Me., which has just been celebrating its sesquicentennial, they used to use what they called a "galamander" to carry heavy stones from the granite quarries. The "galamander" is a combination stone-boat on wheels and a derrick."
Etymology
Unknown; said to have been coined by an American blacksmith Elder Littlefield, and possibly from galley (“type of boat”) + meander (“to turn or wind in a course or passage”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.