the.com/motorcar
What the British call a car when they want it to sound like it has a monocle.
means An automobile — a self-powered road vehicle for carrying passengers, back when 'car' alone wasn't enough to clarify you didn't mean a railway carriage.
from Simply 'motor' + 'car' — coined in the late 1800s when horseless carriages needed distinguishing from the horse-drawn kind, and from railway 'cars.' 'Car' itself traces back through Old North French 'carre' to Latin 'carrus,' a Celtic-derived word for wheeled wagon. 'Motorcar' was the formal, slightly grand British term of choice just as 'automobile' was catching on elsewhere — eventually it aged into the word that sounds like it's wearing a waistcoat.
- origin era
- coined 1890s, sounds older than it is
- usage today
- mostly legal documents and period dramas
- vs car
- same thing, three extra syllables of dignity