Other forms: turntables
A turntable is a turning platform that swings a locomotive around. On the turntable, a railway turntable, turn it on the turntable.
Steam locomotives could not run backwards well over distance, so every terminus needed one, and their pits survive at many preserved railways. The word is also the record player's rotating platter, and disc jockeys made a verb of it. Note that the compound is turn plus table and says exactly what it is.
1nounrailA turning platform that swings a locomotive around.
“At the end of the line, the engine was turned round on a turntable.”
2nounrotatingThe rotating platter of a record player.
“He put the record on the turntable and gently lowered the needle.”
turntable is a rotating platform.
Turn plus table. The railway sense came first and the record player borrowed it.
From turn + table.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Railways