I’m indebted to Florida state Sen. Jim King, R-Jacksonville, for adding a new word to my vocabulary, though I wish he had defined it more clearly.

The word is “truckliness.” A search of dictionaries failed to turn up a listing, and when I scanned the Internet I was invariably led back to Sen. King’s reference, which had to do with a dangling replica of a piece of a bull’s anatomy. Apparently, replicas have been showing up with growing frequency, attached to trailer hitches of pickup trucks.

I’m not going to call the anatomical item by its name, but I’ll give you a broad hint: It’s what distinguishes Elmer the bull from Elsie the cow and from Steve the steer. It’s what the bravest of Southerners eat under the euphemized name of mountain oysters (and don’t knock ‘em till you’ve tried ‘em).

Got it?

Now back to Senator King and his colleagues. Some Floridians were offended by the sight of these replicas dangling from trailer hitches. The Senate adopted a measure that would make them illegal.

Sen. King objected. He said he once had a set of those danglers on one of his vehicles, which he described as “all pimped out.” It was no more than “an expression of truckliness.” His wife, who was not into truckliness, persuaded him to remove them, leading some to the conclusion that the senator — or at least his truck — had been emasculated.

I’m wondering what an “all-pimped-out” truck looks like. When I think of an “all pimped out” car, I think of a coral pink Town Car with a vinyl-covered fake landau roof. A pimped-out pickup? Think of Bill Clinton’s pickup of younger days with a load bed lined with red velvet carpeting instead of Astro-Turf. And the underpinnings of an anatomically correct bull dangling from the trailer hitch.

I’m not sure why the Florida Senate thinks it’s necessary to outlaw that male bovine ornament from truck trailer hitches. I’m guessing that the state has been taken over by Yankee immigrants who have never seen live animals in their natural state of undress and are deeply offended. (But I can’t for the life of me figure how anyone could walk through Times Square without blinking, yet reach for the smelling salts at the sight of an au naturelle bovine.)

I would point out to them that the book of Genesis gives no indication that the animals of Eden joined Adam and Eve in partaking of the forbidden fruit. Therefore, they never felt shame over their nakedness and never found reason to hide it.

Having grown up around farm animals, I never felt offended by their nudity and, in fact, found the view of mountain oysters on the hoof to be quite reassuring. It meant that the bull’s horns were on the other end of the animal, safely pointed away from me.

As a farm boy and linthead, I learned to look the other way when I saw something that offended me, but I suppose that Florida legislators — Sen. King excepted — assume that their constituents have a constitutional right to be shielded from raw nature. That probably grows out of several generations of replacing natural wetlands with artificial subdivisions and replacing living things with plastic replicas.

Anyway, this whole thing seems to be resulting in double jeopardy for all Florida bulls. If I were a bull and saw a Florida legislator approaching, I’d want to back away quickly before he decided to fine me for displaying my bullishness. I’d be equally wary of any truck driver who might want to turn me into a steer just to have an ornament for his trailer hitch.

Which brings us back to the issue of truckliness.

The closest my dictionaries came to “truckliness” was the word “truckle.” According to one dictionary, it means “to behave in a weak or servile way.” It comes from the truckle bed — also known as a trundle bed — which slides under a larger bed. Truckle beds were for kids and for the domestic help. That’s not the kind of bed Bill Clinton’s pickup had. And the “weak and servile” definition doesn’t fit the sturdy Southern image of a man with his pickup, pimped-out or plain.

I decided that the word must be analogous to “manliness,” which means “exhibiting man-like qualities.” If you have manliness, you’re strong and self-reliant, and partial to SEC football and NASCAR. So “truckliness” must mean “exhibiting truck-like qualities.” If a truck has truckliness, it must have a gun rack, a tool box across the load bed, a 7-liter V-8, 4-wheel drive, a front-bumper winch, silhouettes of nude women on the mudflaps, and a symbol of bullishness dangling from the trailer hitch.

Only one thing bothers me about that: Why would a self-assured, robust specimen of Southern manhood need a set of bull’s genitalia to affirm his manhood?

My best guess is that when you see one of those on a trailer hitch, you’re looking up the tailpipe of an insecure juvenile who can’t let a challenge to his ego go unanswered. Try not to pass him. Once you’re around him he may resent this affront to his truckliness by thrusting his Dodge Ram as close as possible to the bow tie on your Chevy’s rear end or the blue oval on your Ford.

Stay behind him. The fact that you can see his ornamented trailer hitch is assurance that the dangerous end of the truck is pointed away from you.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 317 Braeburn Drive, Anderson SC 29612 or e-mail him at WadesDixieco@aol.com