Twelve-year-old Gagnon from Newport, Oregon, wonders: What’s the difference between a motor and an engine? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Motor v. Engine” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Ganyan...
Willem’s eight-year-old daughter asked him to scroll the window down on a road trip. Her reasoning was tidy: she scrolls with a finger on a phone, and the car window also moves when she presses a button with a finger. The phrase updates roll down a...
Cark is a noun meaning “worry” or “trouble.” As a verb, cark means “to cause worry or distress,” as in to have carking doubts. This word derives from a Latin word for “burden,” which also produced...
A listener in Plaza, North Dakota, says he tried to signal some teenagers to lower their car window by moving his fist in a circle, but since they grew up with push-button window controls, they didn’t understand the gesture. What’s the...
The word vintage, from the Latin word vinum “wine,” originally applied to the yield of vineyard during a specific season or a particular place. Over time, vintage came to be applied to automobiles and eventually to clothing. The term...
A defective car is a lemon because the fruit’s tartness long suggested sourness and disappointment. Austin from Owensboro, Kentucky, heard a friend use the word for a troublesome minivan. The negative sense of lemon appears by the 1860s for a...