TexRiv_63 Posted December 7, 2021 Share Posted December 7, 2021 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. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carbking Posted December 7, 2021 Share Posted December 7, 2021 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. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hidden_hunter Posted December 7, 2021 Share Posted December 7, 2021 Funnily enough trunk isn’t used here, we use the much more sensible boot… and our engines are under the bonnet 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
60FlatTop Posted December 8, 2021 Share Posted December 8, 2021 After spending a week of R&R at Kings Cross in 1969 I can understand the thing about mixing up boots and bonnets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Str8-8-Dave Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 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... 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete O Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 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 😉 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hook Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 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. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grimy Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 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. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lump Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 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. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hook Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
playswithbrass Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 And why do we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway?? 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Restorer32 Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 Freight goes by truck rather than train. Cargo goes by ship rather than truck. Shipments go by train rather than ship. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesR Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Restorer32 Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 And what exactly is the difference between macadam and tarmac? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buick35 Posted December 9, 2021 Author Share Posted December 9, 2021 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 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John_S_in_Penna Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 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. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ply33 Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 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. 4 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wayne sheldon Posted December 10, 2021 Share Posted December 10, 2021 ply33, I kid you not! That is one of the most interesting things I have read in months! Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Restorer32 Posted December 10, 2021 Share Posted December 10, 2021 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John_S_in_Penna Posted December 10, 2021 Share Posted December 10, 2021 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary 30U Posted December 11, 2021 Share Posted December 11, 2021 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. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wayne sheldon Posted December 11, 2021 Share Posted December 11, 2021 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. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pfeil Posted December 11, 2021 Share Posted December 11, 2021 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?????? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pfeil Posted December 11, 2021 Share Posted December 11, 2021 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pfeil Posted December 11, 2021 Share Posted December 11, 2021 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" 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wayne sheldon Posted December 11, 2021 Share Posted December 11, 2021 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. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pfeil Posted December 11, 2021 Share Posted December 11, 2021 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keithb7 Posted December 11, 2021 Share Posted December 11, 2021 The word telephone is becoming rare in the modern world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1957Birdman Posted December 11, 2021 Share Posted December 11, 2021 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hidden_hunter Posted December 11, 2021 Share Posted December 11, 2021 4 hours ago, 1957Birdman said: station wagon is a shooting brake that one isn’t universal, more to do with premium cars Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JACK M Posted December 11, 2021 Share Posted December 11, 2021 (edited) 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) 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wayne sheldon Posted December 12, 2021 Share Posted December 12, 2021 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! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank DuVal Posted December 12, 2021 Share Posted December 12, 2021 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!😉 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John_S_in_Penna Posted December 12, 2021 Share Posted December 12, 2021 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. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hook Posted December 12, 2021 Share Posted December 12, 2021 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. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JACK M Posted December 12, 2021 Share Posted December 12, 2021 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. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SC38dls Posted December 12, 2021 Share Posted December 12, 2021 (edited) 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) 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldcarfudd Posted December 12, 2021 Share Posted December 12, 2021 There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pfeil Posted December 12, 2021 Share Posted December 12, 2021 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! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pfeil Posted December 12, 2021 Share Posted December 12, 2021 6 hours ago, hook said: That's easy. Just look at some of these monstrous pick up trucks of today. Those are step rails. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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