History TYRES OR TIRES?

A perfect thread for a slow day in the garage/shop, or what have you........

 

tyres down here in NZ, for me anyways, cheers and Merry Christmas

 

America and Great Britain....two countries separated by a common language.

 

Hitchhiker , Don't forget Australia.

 

I still laugh when I worked at Jaguar I went to the parts dept for a compression fitting .

got looked at like I had a horn growing out of my forehead .

after a little back and forth I walked away with a ferrule and 2 olives

wtf ? Am I fixing a car or mixing a martini !

 

Timely thread as only today I was perplexed to find in the fitting instructions of an American Autowire wiring kit where I was expecting to find references to lites it said lights. Not sure what is right (rite?) by American standards, or whether a sly Brit had had a hand in that?

Chris

 

@Happydaze I've seen it spelled both ways here in the US. I became familiar with the English names for car bits when I was quite young and my Mother bought me an issue of Thoroughbred and Classic cars. Then started getting Classic and Sports Car as well. Learned about specials and the VSCC, hillclimbs and trials. Love it all.

 

I still want to know what the fuck is a dizzy?

 

It’s what you get at Disneyland after riding the teacups…… oh wait that’s a spin dizzy.

 

Everybody knows its tars here in da South! Jus axe anybody!

 

Hey, Clem. Is my car ready?

--Yep, but you need Tarzan Shocks.

What's Tarzan shocks?

--About $800 plus the labor.

 

WIRE

 

But why do they call distributors, dizzy? They aren’t spelled the same nor do they mean the same things.

 

We say tars or casings.

 

See, you're problem @VANDENPLAS is that you were speaking Canadien English, and your coworkers were speaking Jagg-you-war. Simple once you understand it. Bob's yer uncle! What I want to know is how did the Canadian accent make it to the U.P. of Michigan, eh??

 

C’mon now ya hoser , ya can’t handle a molsen

 

The english language is the dirivitive form of the germanic tribal languages.

 

Tyres here, too. Though apparently that's a relatively recent affectation on the part of the British. As Wikipedia has it:

"The spelling tyre does not appear until the 1840s when the English began shrink-fitting railway car wheels with malleable iron. Nevertheless, traditional publishers continued using tire. The Times newspaper in Britain was still using tire as late as 1905.[3] The spelling tyre began to be commonly used in the 19th century for pneumatic tires in the UK. The 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica states that "The spelling 'tyre' is not now accepted by the best English authorities, and is unrecognized in the US",[4] while Fowler's Modern English Usage of 1926 says that "there is nothing to be said for 'tyre', which is etymologically wrong, as well as needlessly divergent from our own [sc. British] older & the present American usage".[5] However, over the course of the 20th century, tyre became established as the standard British spelling.[2]"​

And thus it has stuck, and I'm happy to leave it stuck.

That's a regional thing. The glottal (or glo'al) stop is something you hear particularly in the Thames Valley and the North-East, though those two do it slightly differently. It may or may not occur in other areas. It's also more common among the moderately wealthy than it once was, as Received Pronunciation doesn't go down very well outside very limited toff echo chambers these days.

 

Those two guys and their movie (Strange Brew) are one of the best Canadian exports ever!

 

My nuts are knackered!

 

Same as we call a carburetor a "carby". We're too lazy to complete the word.
All I know is whitewall tires are cheap (in the U.S.), and whitewall tyres are expensive (in Australia).

 

What’s wrong with “jugs” or “pots”. Jugs were not on the tops of engines for me and I’ve glanced at quite a few pair as they passed by.
In the 50’s guy called engines “ mills” too…..beyond my thinking.

 

Gosh, now I'm up a creek/crick on the tire/tyre thing......

 

I have a feeling all this guy cares about is finding four that match!

 

Depending on where that photo was taken, that's a lot of Tyres or Tires, as far as the eye can see. HRP

 

Wait till you hear my German version,
cause ama livn in haaa caatn down here, when aam drunk as Cooter Brown.


Frank

 

As a kid in Philly they were called tires, here in Central,South Carolina they are called tars.
I love the southern accent, it's starting to rub off on me.

 

When I'm doing my videos I'll often use one expression then the other in the same sentence without making a big deal of it. For example using the term "oil pan" and then saying "sump" as I continue on. I never use the term "sodder" though. That's just wrong.

 

I can remember when you'd ask a bloke to lift the bonnet so you could check out the donk.