Other forms: trailers
A trailer is the two minutes of a film they show you before the film exists — the best shots, the loudest music, and a voice telling you the date. You sit through four of them in the dark before the thing you actually paid for begins.
The other trailer has wheels and no engine: the box you tow behind the car to take rubbish to the tip, the long container half of a lorry, a boat parked on a trailer in somebody's driveway. In American English a trailer is also a house on wheels, which is what a trailer park is full of. The film sense takes for — the trailer for the new film, not of it — and the shorter clip released months ahead of the real one is a teaser trailer.
1nountrailerA short film advertising a film or programme that has not come out yet.~13%
“The trailer gives away half the plot.”
synonyms: preview, teaser
2nouncontainerA container or platform on wheels, pulled along behind a vehicle.~52%
“They loaded the bikes onto a trailer and tied them down.”
3nounhomeIn American English, a home on wheels, parked for good.~35%
“She grew up in a trailer on the edge of town.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 182 sentences found in the wild and placed 173 of them on a sense (9 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
trailer is a short advertisement for a film.
A trailer is a thing that trails — it comes along behind. That is plain enough for the one hitched to your car, and it used to be just as plain for the film sort: previews were once shown after the main feature rather than before it, trailing along at the end of the programme. The running order changed and the name stayed.
Old French
trailler
Middle English
trailen
English
trail
English, today
trailer
From trail + er. The film sense derives from the fact that previews were formerly shown after the main feature, rather than before as is usual today, that is trailing after the main feature. trail comes from Middle English trailen, from Old French trailler. From Middle English trailen, from Old French trailler (“to tow; pick up the scent of a quarry”), from Vulgar Latin tragulāre (“to drag”), from Latin tragula (“dragnet, javelin thrown by a strap”), probably related to Latin trahere (“to pull, drag along”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA