Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An automobile.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun historical An early
automobile , of the types designed before World War I.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an early term for an automobile
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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alexz commented on the word horseless carriage
A phrase more likely to refer to a horse drawn carriage missing it's horses than to an actual automobile.
According to Google's ngram viewer, comparing car, automobile, and horseless carriage. Horseless carriage barely shows up on the graph, and looking at early uses of Horseless carriage, the pre auto usage refers to people stranded with a carriage and no horses.
Cars used to refer to railway cars, and car is more widely used than automobile.
http://bit.ly/16iJbXx ngram view of car , automobile, horseless carriage
I think the term 'horseless carriage' makes a bit of fun of the older generation. The 1920's were the age of the Radio boom and subsequent stock market crash.
The peak use for 'horseless carriage' according to google, was between 1940 and 1950.
Another term, the autocar, had even less usage.
It seems to be a term that 20th century people use when describing how 19th century people would have talked. There was one book called 'The Horseless Carriage', and some references to the steam powered carriages.
Wikipedia has more information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile#Etymology
September 22, 2013
fbharjo commented on the word horseless carriage
Cow less couch?
September 23, 2013