automobile 的詞源

"汽車，指自帶發動機和動力源的交通工具，"。 1895年，來自 auto- + car。

Which is it to be? We observe that the London Times has lent the weight of its authority to the word "autocar," which it now prints without the significant inverted commas but with a hyphen, "auto-car." We believe that the vocable originated with a journal called the Hardwareman, which succeeded in obtaining the powerful support of the Engineer for its offspring. As for ourselves, being linguistic purists, we do not care for hybrid constructions—"auto" is Greek, while "car" is Latin and Celtic. At the same time, such clumsy phrases as "horseless carriages," "mechanical road carriages," and "self-propelled vehicles" are not meeting with general favour. Why not therefore adopt the philogically sound "motor-car," which could be run into a single word, "motorcar"? [The Electrical Engineer, Dec. 20, 1895]

它到底是什麼？ 我們注意到倫敦 Times 已經把它印出來，沒有反轉的引號卻有連字符“auto-car”，從而爲這個單詞傾盡了它的權威。我們認爲這個詞彙的起源可以追溯到一個名爲 Hardwareman 的雜誌，該雜誌成功獲得了 Engineer 的有力支持。至於我們，作爲語言純粹主義者，我們不喜歡雜交結構——“auto”是希臘語，“car”是拉丁語和凱爾特語。同時，"horseless carriages"，"mechanical road carriages"，和 "self-propelled vehicles" 這樣的笨拙說法並沒有得到普遍的認可。爲什麼不採用語言學上正確的 "motor-car"，它可以成爲一個單詞 "motorcar"？[《電氣工程師》1895年12月20日]

與 automobile 進行比較。

15世紀末（卡克斯頓），"能夠移動的，能夠被移動的，不固定或靜止的"，源自14世紀的古法語 mobile，源自拉丁語 mobilis "可移動的，易於移動的； 鬆散的，不堅固的"，比喻地指"易彎曲的，靈活的，易受影響的，敏捷的，迅速的； 易變的，不穩定的，善變的"，縮寫形式爲 *movibilis，源自 movere "移動"（源自 PIE 詞根 *meue- "推開"）。1927年開始出現了社會學意義上的"能夠進入不同社會層級的"含義。1936年開始記錄了 Mobile home "永久停放並用作住所的大拖車"。1983年開始出現了 Mobile phone。

A long-distance number tapped into an Illinois Bell car telephone glowed red on a display. Satisfied that the digits were correct, I pushed the SEND button on the phone. Familiar beeps and boops emerged from the handset. Then, before a half block of this Chicago suburb had slipped by, I was in contact with my New York office. ["Take-along Telephones," Popular Science, October 1983]

伊利諾伊貝爾汽車電話上輸入的長途號碼在顯示屏上變紅。確認數字無誤後，我按下電話上的發送按鈕。熟悉的嘟嘟聲從聽筒中傳出。然後，在這個芝加哥郊區的半個街區還沒過去之前，我就與我的紐約辦公室取得了聯繫。["隨身攜帶的電話"，《大衆科學》雜誌，1983年10月]