'Tractor' is Latin for 'one who pulls' — before naming the farm machine (1901), it was a quack medical device.
A powerful motor vehicle with large rear wheels used chiefly for pulling farm equipment; more broadly, any vehicle or engine designed to pull a load.
From Latin 'tractor' (one who draws or pulls), agent noun from 'trahere' (past participle 'tractus' — to draw, to pull, to drag, to haul). The PIE root behind 'trahere' is *tragh- / *dʰerǵʰ- (to drag, to draw). Latin 'trahere' is enormously productive in English: 'traction,' 'tract,' 'abstract' (drawn away), 'attract' (drawn toward), 'contract' (drawn together), 'distract' (drawn apart), 'extract' (drawn out), 'portrait' (drawn forth), 'protract' (drawn forward in time), 'retract' (drawn back), 'subtract' (drawn from below). The word 'tractor' entered English in the 1790s as a medical term for Perkins patent tractors
Before it meant a farm vehicle, 'tractor' was the name of a notorious quack medical device. In the 1790s, Elisha Perkins sold 'metallic tractors' — pointed metal rods that supposedly drew disease out of the body by being stroked over the skin. The name came from Latin 'trahere' (to draw), and the scam was so successful that even George Washington bought a set.