Lap trowel

The term lap ladle refers to a department for luggage or a specific seat on or in horse-drawn vehicles.

Lap trowels could be named both by latticework or wickerwork on carriages and lockable trunk on mail cars. Occasionally the word was apparently also used to denote the brakeman’s seat on railways.

etymology

Adelung speculates that the first part of the word is derived either from lap in the sense of a cavity or from shooting in the sense of throwing, since the luggage is "shot" into the lap ladle. The second part simply means "hollow recessed space". Krünitz adds that the rear seat of calashes is also called a lap ladle.

Literary testimonies

In Christian Reuter's “Schelmuffsky”, Chapter 8, the first-person narrator has to sit in his lap and drive.

Karl Philipp Moritz reports in his “Travels of a German in England in 1782” that he once climbed from a life-threatening seat on a stagecoach into his lap so as not to fall from the coach, but was then almost crushed by the jolted pieces of luggage .

In Theodor Fontane's novel Count Petöfy , a lap ladle is mentioned, which is apparently attached to chains under a circus wagon and is large enough for a whole family of dogs; There are also reports of attachable lap trowels elsewhere.