What are Trailers?

We use the term "trailer" to refer to words that "trail over the end of a number", meaning that the first few letters of that word correspond to the last few numbers of a phone number. Then, the numbers run out but the word keeps going.

In this example, the telephone number could be dialed as "555TRAILER" (5558724537). Your telephone company's equipment servicing your telephone line will likely ignore the 537 ("LER"), the last three digits, and pretend that you only dialed "555-8724".

When using DialABC's search tools, you can make trailers show up by picking the "Show Trailers" or "Show Everything" under the "Extras" option. They show up in the word search results highlighted with green instead of the normal orange.

An Example: 642-3245

The trailers for this number can be seen on the right hand side in green boxes. Notice how these words go past the last digit of the phone number.

6 MNO

4 GHI

2 ABC

3 DEF

2 ABC

4 GHI

5 JKL

If you like The Simpsons, you might choose "Oh Cecil" as your favourite mnemonic for this number. However, if your friend rides (or sells) Harleys, you might use instead "Nice Bike". When you call your friend, you would only need to dial "NICEBIK" or "6423245, but in most cases you could dial the extra digit ("64232453") and the telephone system will just ignore it.

Trailers give you the option to use a mnemonic that may be slighly longer, but is much easier to remember.