princeton wrote:Noun
S: (n) motor (machine that converts other forms of energy into mechanical energy and so imparts motion)
S: (n) motor (a nonspecific agent that imparts motion) "happiness is the aim of all men and the motor of all action"
Verb
S: (v) drive, motor (travel or be transported in a vehicle) "We drove to the university every morning"; "They motored to London for the theater"
Adjective
S: (adj) centrifugal, motor (conveying information to the muscles from the CNS) "motor nerves"
S: (adj) motive, motor (causing or able to cause motion) "a motive force"; "motive power"; "motor energy"
Quote:
A car has a starter motor, a windscreen wiper motor, windscreen washer motor, a fuel pump motor and motors to adjust the wing mirrors from within the car and a (motorised) radio antenna - but the power plant that propels the car is an engine. Again an aircraft will have many motors installed for operation of its many auxiliary operations and services, but aircraft are propelled by engines, in this case, jet engines.
Quote:
In everyday, non-technical usage the words have much the same meaning. But they have such clearly defined and fixed compounds (except in the rocket case) that they can’t be thought of as entirely interchangeable. The magazine article argues that the difference is that engines contain their own fuel or are part of a highly integrated engine-fuel system, whereas a motor draws on externally supplied energy. That’s the rule given in the Oxford English Dictionary, but on reflection it seems not wholly satisfactory. It doesn’t work for outboard motor or rocket motor for example. And it doesn’t explain why the two words should have been applied in this way. For that we have to look into their history...
By the time that vehicles driven by internal combustion engines had begun to appear in any numbers, at the very end of the century, both words had become well established in common usage. The driving force was obviously an engine, which consumed fuel to provide motive power. But why the conveyance as a whole was termed a motor vehicle is less obvious.