Old terminology

[TexRiv_63]

We still refer to the rear storage compartment on a standard car as the "the trunk" - but there hasn't been any of these for 80 some years.

[carbking]

A few years, some automotive "journalist" wanted to eliminate "carburetion day" from the pre-Indy 500 activities.

 

Probably did not know that 2 of the 4 investors in the Indy track were Wheeler and Schebler...............carburetor guys.

 

Jon.

[hidden_hunter]

Funnily enough trunk isn’t used here, we use the much more sensible boot… and our engines are under the bonnet

[60FlatTop]

After spending a week of R&R at Kings Cross in 1969 I can understand the thing about mixing up boots and bonnets.

[Str8-8-Dave]

On 12/6/2021 at 5:49 PM, Terry Bond said:

British I believe.  That opens another can of worms - bonnet, hood, wing, spanner, dizzy, dickey seat, nearside/offside......

 

I say Ollie- Do you know why Brits drink warm beer?   Why of course I do Stanley- It's because Lucas makes the refrigerators...

[Pete O]

On 12/7/2021 at 3:16 PM, hidden_hunter said:

Funnily enough trunk isn’t used here, we use the much more sensible boot… and our engines are under the bonnet

Sensible?    You keep your junk in a shoe and your engine under a hat?   I hope you were being facetious 😉

[hook]

On 12/7/2021 at 3:16 PM, hidden_hunter said:

Funnily enough trunk isn’t used here, we use the much more sensible boot… and our engines are under the bonnet

Right you are but, at least we over/up here don't use a torch to look into the gas tank to see if it's empty.

[Grimy]

Pre WW2, "torch" or "pocket torch" was a common term for a battery-powered flashlight in the US as well as other English-speaking countries.

[lump]

On 12/6/2021 at 6:55 PM, plymouthcranbrook said:

Wasn’t unleaded gas called “white gas” in the past.  I remember getting white gas from the hardware store back in the 1960’s.

I recall my grandpa going to a local gas station to purchase "White Gas" for his lawnmowers, lanterns, etc. The gas station had a separate pump in the corner of the lot, for white gas. The liquid was very clear, with no goldish or orangish color to it. It did cost more than the gas which were sold in their normal pumps at the island. 

 

Reference.com lists a definition of "White Gas" as follows: White gas is the generic name for Coleman fuel or naphtha. It is a flammable gas commonly used as camp-stove and lantern fuel due to its refined purity and high heat output. White gas can also refer to pure gasoline or undyed gasoline. Mark Shaw posted a link to that page above. 

[hook]

39 minutes ago, Grimy said:

Pre WW2, "torch" or "pocket torch" was a common term for a battery-powered flashlight in the US as well as other English-speaking countries.

I didn't know that. I don't stand corrected but educated. Thanks

[playswithbrass]

And why do we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway??

[Restorer32]

Freight goes by truck rather than train.  Cargo goes by ship rather than truck.  Shipments go by train rather than ship.

[JamesR]

9 minutes ago, Restorer32 said:

Freight goes by truck rather than train.  Cargo goes by ship rather than truck.  Shipments go by train rather than ship.

 

And don't get us started on air travel. Our closest big airport is called an "airfield." It probably hasn't been a field during my lifetime...and I'm not that young.

[Restorer32]

And what exactly is the difference between macadam and tarmac?

[Buick35]

1 hour ago, playswithbrass said:

And why do we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway??

I think asteroids and hemorrhoids are also mixed up

[John_S_in_Penna]

2 hours ago, playswithbrass said:

And why do we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway??

 

A serious answer to a tongue-in-cheek question:

 

Both are meant for driving on.  A true parkway, as

produced in the early 20th century, had a park-like

environment as its focus.  The grounds on the sides

of the roadway were often manicured and green,

even with some garden areas;  and the bridges were

architecturally designed to look beautiful.  The word

is not a synonym for freeway.

 

Similarly, any "Park Avenue" typically had a wide median

between the lanes--to serve as an attractive green space

or narrow park.  New York City's Park Avenue once had

a wider median, with landscaping, a winding sidewalk and

gardens, and park benches.  That median was later

narrowed for traffic.

[ply33]

34 minutes ago, Restorer32 said:

And what exactly is the difference between macadam and tarmac?

The original road construction method promoted by John McAdam in the early 1800s was simply layers of carefully sized crushed or broken rock with a top “dust” (pea gravel) layer rolled in to lock and stabilize things. By the early 1900s, this original style was sometimes also referred to as water bound macadam. It worked pretty well with horse drawn vehicles as the unpowered wheels had a tendency to compact and roll the surface more than the horses’ hooves tore it up.

 

When cars came along with the forward motion was via power driven wheels the shearing action of the tires against the top surface of the macadam road tore the top layers resulting in failure of the paving system. To solve that they started experimenting with different binders with tar being the winner. So you had a new road building technique resulting in a “tar bound macadam road” or tarmac.

 

I am not sure, but I think in the UK they still refer to asphaltic bound pavements as “tarmac” while that is more likely to be called “macadam” in the US. In this case the US use of “macadam” is probably less correct.

[wayne sheldon]

ply33, 

I kid you not! That is one of the most interesting things I have read in months!

Thank you.

[Restorer32]

Very interesting indeed. My question referred more to why we call the areas around airports tarmac. I have never heard the word used other than when referring to airports.

[John_S_in_Penna]

1 hour ago, Restorer32 said:

Very interesting indeed. My question referred more to why we call the areas around airports tarmac. I have never heard the word used other than when referring to airports.

The press sometimes misuses words and facts.

To my engineering sense, "tarmac" and "macadam"

and "asphalt" are the same.  In engineering, it is

sometimes even called "bituminous concrete."

One informal regional name for it is "tarvy."

 

But it can be anywhere--where you park on your

driveway, where you drive on the parkway, and 

not just where planes taxi at an airport.

[Gary 30U]

Follow up to Ply33

When I was young fellow I worked in an Associated Gas station. (1957-58)

 

We had Ethyl gas, and it was a common term to get Associated with Ethyl.

[wayne sheldon]

I think a lot of people here know that I love linguistics! The study of words, their origins, and how they change to accommodate new needs.

In discussions (many times full blown arguments!), I often comment "colloquialisms, why is it always colloquialisms?"

It wasn't such a problem, even only a half century ago. Most people had grown up close to where they had been born, were used to language common in their regional dialect. People that traveled a lot were used to differing dialects and colloquialisms. Such interactions were common enough that even people that didn't travel much were aware of the regional differences.

During the depression and the World War, people moved around to where jobs needed them more than people had ever moved around in hundreds of years before! It took a couple decades, but with the help of coast to coast radio and television, our language has become much more homogenized over a large area than any language ever before. Still, oh so very many of those old words and their varying regional differences are still around. People, however, seem to have a lot more trouble with them than most people used to have. Today, there is an expectation of language being universal. Something it has NEVER been, nor is it likely to ever truly be.

John S says "To my engineering sense, "tarmac" and "macadam" and "asphalt" are the same.  In engineering, it is sometimes even called "bituminous concrete." One informal regional name for it is "tarvy."" Five terms that mean essentially the same thing? Or do they? "Tarmac" actually does mean an area where airplanes take-off, land, load and unload passengers or cargo (as previously eloquently pointed out, doesn't go by car!). In that sense, "tarmac" is a different meaning, however having derived from the word for what it was made from.

Having grown up in an area that usually did not refer to streets as "tarmac", I have however run into a good number of people over the years that did in conversation use the word in discussing something about the streets. And, I have run into a few people that referred to their driveways as "tarmac". Often, they had a hint of other-regional accents in their speech.

 

I find regional dialects fascinating! I grew up in San Jose California, the Southern end of the San Francisco Bay Area. When I was old enough to become active in the antique automobile hobby, I became involved in several local clubs around the Bay Area, and several of my closest and best friends lived in the East bay region. It was interesting to me, how within this huge densely populated area surround a bay nearly a hundred miles in length, two regions, only about thirty miles apart, could speak so differently.

In San Jose and the Silicon Valley area, nearly everybody referred to the freeways by their highway numbers. One took the 101, 17, 280, 680, 37, etc etc etc. In the East Bay, Hayward, Fremont and Oakland areas, the freeways were almost always called by names! It was the Bayshore, the Nimitz, the Warren, the MacArthur, and on and on.

One time, at a swap meet, I felt like I was a bi-lingual translator. A fellow from the South Bay and a fellow from the East Bay were talking, one was trying to give directions to the other. One ONLY knew freeways by names, the other ONLY knew them by their numbers. I literally had to translate the directions from one to the other!

 

Thirty miles.

[Pfeil]

On 12/6/2021 at 5:06 PM, oldcarfudd said:

A related topic is retronyms; compound names for things that used to be called by simple nouns.  Steam train.  Propeller plane.  Film camera.  Tube radio.  A century ago, what other kind of train, plane, camera or radio was there?

You can leave trains out of it. 

 

Let's go back to the late 1800's early 1900's. Didn't any of you guys build a Crystal set in school??????

[Pfeil]

On 12/6/2021 at 4:25 PM, Tom Boehm said:

Another old term still in use is "unleaded gas". Gas has not had lead in it for 40 years. When will it just be "gas" again? 

Go to the airport where they sell 100 low lead gas.

[Pfeil]

On 12/6/2021 at 4:52 PM, ply33 said:

Before I was old enough to drive I and all gas stations were full service, I recall my dad telling the attendant to “fill it with Ethyl”. I think that was probably archaic terminology even then as by the late 1950s and early 1960s all gas had tetraethyl lead. Maybe not all gas, I vaguely recall Richfield advertising boron and apparently a chain back east (Atlantic?) was known for unleaded gasoline. At least the "ethyl" terminology for the premium gas has disappeared.

 

Odd when you think about how you say something you can start second guessing your automatic self. I am pretty sure that I just call the 87 PON stuff “regular”. None of my cars need the mid-grade or premium grade gas.

I thought I heard Fred Merts say to Lucy " I just put old Ethyl in the trunk" 

[wayne sheldon]

18 minutes ago, Pfeil said:

Let's go back to the late 1800's early 1900's. Didn't any of you guys build a Crystal set in school??????

 

I was a strange kid. I built a crystal radio set when I was about nine years old (about 1960). I listened to it almost every night for a couple years. Early on with it, I found a classical music station that I listened to more than everything else put together. 35 years later, the operators of that station lost the lease they had been operating under for the whole time, and I found out they had gone onto the air only maybe a year before I found them on my crystal set. I had listened to them on and off for nearly the whole time they were on the air. The first couple years on a crystal set. I still have the headphones, and if I could find them in all my junk? Probably most of the rest of it.

[Pfeil]

On 12/7/2021 at 1:16 PM, hidden_hunter said:

Funnily enough trunk isn’t used here, we use the much more sensible boot… and our engines are under the bonnet

Make sense to me, bonnet is a French word.

 

[keithb7]

The word telephone is becoming rare in the modern world.

[1957Birdman]

Well, over in the British Isles a car has a silencer, not a muffler; a station wagon is a shooting brake; a convertible is a drop head coupe; and any Thunderbird sold there has wings instead of front fenders. 

Lastly, isn't hot water heater redundant?

Lew Bachman

1957 Thunderbird

[hidden_hunter]

4 hours ago, 1957Birdman said:

station wagon is a shooting brake

that one isn’t universal, more to do with premium cars 

[JACK M]

16 hours ago, wayne sheldon said:

 I had listened to them on and off for nearly the whole time they were on the air.

And for free.

Now they want something like 20 bucks a month for Sirius. I offered 30 annually and they came back a $2 a month for the first two, then $17 after that. (Plus, taxes and fees, which the phone salesman didn't know the numbers, so probably north of 20) New truck came with a few months of free trial and now my phone won't stop ringing.

I won't pay that for what should be free.

Edited December 11, 2021 by JACK M (see edit history)

[wayne sheldon]

32 minutes ago, Jack Bennett said:

When is the last time you actually saw a running board?

 

Well? I could make a joke about it was just lying there and not running? But it was about half an hour ago when I walked past my 1915 model T while I brought in groceries!

[Frank DuVal]

8 hours ago, JACK M said:

And for free.

Now they want something like 20 bucks a month for Sirius.

I still listen to classical music over the air. 

But, all radio costs money, it has never been free, so the operators need to get money somehow. Advertising, pledge drives, etc. TINSTAAFL you know!😉

[John_S_in_Penna]

9 hours ago, Jack Bennett said:

When is the last time you actually saw a running board?

Good point;  but modern utility vehicles still

often have them, and so we still use that term.

[hook]

10 hours ago, Jack Bennett said:

When is the last time you actually saw a running board?

That's easy. Just look at some of these monstrous pick up trucks of today.

[JACK M]

13 hours ago, Frank DuVal said:

TINSTAAFL you know!

I guess I don't know.

I have never paid money to listen to a radio.

When I was a kid (way before cable tv) anything that came over the airwaves was considered public. Even the early satellite broadcasts.

 

[SC38dls]

14 hours ago, Frank DuVal said:

, etc. TINSTAAFL you know!

Ok I’ll be the dummy that ask “what the hell does that mean?”  If it’s texting shorthand this is a forum not a text site — spell it out for dummies like me. Especially when we are old dummies like me! 
dave s 

Edited December 12, 2021 by SC38dls (see edit history)

[oldcarfudd]

There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

[Pfeil]

16 hours ago, Jack Bennett said:

When is the last time you actually saw a running board?

That's easy. My 1964 and 1965 beetles have them!

[Pfeil]

6 hours ago, hook said:

That's easy. Just look at some of these monstrous pick up trucks of today.

Those are step rails.