It's not a "motor" dammit... it's an ENGINE!!!!!

Isn't it???

My dad always corrected me and others about this... yet I seem to see it nearly every day on "the net".

Motor = electric

What's your take on this one?

 

Not so.

 

Yep, I just got back from a ride on my enginecycle.

 

I was told motors were electric, like a heater fan motor or something. Im sure overseas the translation is different.

 

This is like trying to argue it's not an automobile, it's a car, or no, it's a motor vehicle.
Don't motor vehicles have motors?
It's General Motors, not General Engines.
Motorboat.
They are all words that describe the same thing!

It's not football, it's soccer!

Use your computer search engine and look the words up!

 

Motor: "any of various devices which develop energy or impart motion"

 

Have fun driving your 'engine car'.

 

It's the "Motor City"! That explains it to me.

 

my grandma always corrects me on that. but to me its slang. like sayin mill.

 

Thank you......thats what my high school auto teacher always corrected us about. It still sticks with me today.

Engine = Internal Combustion
Motor = Electric

 

Let's see.........

Motor oil
Motor boat
Motor racing

But I've always heard the same thing............ a motor is electric.

Oh, and then there's the steam engine

 

Technically speaking, a motor converts electrical energy into mechanical energy, while an engine converts chemical energy into mechanical energy.

I think in the early days of the automobile, the act of driving one was called "motoring". Naturally, as the phrase got used more and more, the automobile became a motor car, and therefor a motor must power this motor car.

I think this is along the same lines as firewall/bulkhead.

 

it's in someone's signature....

You say "potato"

I say "fuck you"


Who cares, really. To me, if you say engine and you are talking about what powers your car. You say motor and you are still talking about the same thing...

 

I like "Mill"
As in "That mill has a lot of gow, Daddio!"

 

an engine is a type or motor.

 

An engine is a motor you paid too much for....

 

A motor is ANYthing that converts energy into mechanical motion.

So technically a starter motor and a small block Ford are both motors, but only the SBF is an engine.

 

Decker wrote:

Yep! I was told the same thing by a guy who owned a shop that rebuilt electric motors.

But few people today differentiate. You see ads for Crate Motors and Crate Engines, both the same product, just different advertising. I don't try to correct anybody. Right or wrong, the terms have become almost interchangeable.

 

Just how long have big block Chevy,s been called ratmotors????

 

The english language is in a state of constant change!!! When I went to high school. I was taught "motor=electric" and "internal combustion and steam=engine". Now the terms seem to be interchangeable.

 

Uhh, a little too much time your hands today?

Cure cancer or something.

 

I think it was an S.I. Hayakawa that said something like, "It doesn't matter how well you say it, it matters how well what you say is understood." He was a semantics professor before he was a senator.

 

It won't be long when MOTORsports will be all electric.......

 

Open a dictionary, look up both words, and you'll see that Gotgas nailed it.

 

I have a friend who is very anal about this same subject. Seems unimportant to me. I just want to have fun.

 

My dad was a high school "shop" teacher... strange irony...?

 

it doesn't matter to me what they are called , i know what they are

 

One time this guy asked me if I had a cam in my car... I told him "no I'm running the valves on pnuematics" He didn't "git it" Do pnuematic tools have "motors"???

 

That reminds me, I need to finish that motor turned firewall for my buddy.

Yeah, there was once a distinction. As with most terminology over time it's eroded. There was also a time when "ain't" wasn't in the dictionary and "gay" still meant happy. Come to think of it "laser" was absent for rather awhile too.

English is fluid and quite adaptable, that's why it's still so strong.


ps. Pneumatic tools ARE motors.