1 a covered vehicle with no side windows in its back half, usually smaller than a lorry/truck, used for carrying goods or people:
a furniture / removal van * a police van (= for carrying police officers or prisoners) * a delivery van * a van driver
2 (AmE) a covered vehicle with side windows, usually smaller than a lorry/truck, that can carry about twelve passengers
3 (BrE) a closed railway carriage for carrying bags, cases, etc. or mail:
a mail / luggage van
IDIOMS
in the van (BrE, formal) at the front or in the leading position:
These artists felt themselves in the van of the movement, true pioneers.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for van is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is van a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, van is tagged as noun.
Does van appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — van appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.