Definition of "wheel-base" [wheel-base]

• In locomotives and railway-cars, the distance between the points of contact of the front and back wheels with the rail. (noun)

The Century Dictionary (Public Domain)

• "I shall never forget that day, we had a large long wheel-base lorry and about 12 of us went searching for bodies all around Kalamata."
• ""If," she continued inexorably, "a train travelling at the rate of sixty-two miles and three-quarters in an hour takes two and a half seconds to pass a lame man walking in the same direction find how many men with one arm each can board a motor-bus in Piccadilly Circus, having first extracted the square root of the wheel-base.""
• "When Fuenterrabia was planned, an eleven-feet-six wheel-base was not considered."