Home » Dictionary » speeder

speeder

speeder
 n.— «The Owen Sound lawyer shelved his legal briefs for a few days to navigate the Canadian Shield in a track motorcar—an odd and colourful contraption used by railroads to inspect lines and transport work crews until the machines were gradually phased out by the 1980s.…The cars are affectionately known as poppers and putt-putts for the sound of the older engines that have an ignition sparked by a hand crank, much like a Ford Model T. And they’re called speeders because, at about 50 kilometres per hour, the mechanized machines raced past the old hand cars they replaced.» —“Pleasure in a putt-putt; Tourists travel by rail on track motorcars” by Maria Calabrese Nugget (North Bay, Ontario, Canada) July 20, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Further reading

Your Two Cents (episode #1558)

Astronauts returning from space say they experience what’s called the overview effect, a new understanding of the fragility of our planet and our need to reflect on what humans all share as a species. A book about the end of the universe...

Dehisce

Janet in Montgomery, Alabama, reports that a day after she had surgery on her hand, the wound burst open, and a doctor noted that her wound dehisced. She’s used to hearing dehisce used in botany to mean the splitting of a plant structure to...