Here's one for the forum. What is the difference in meaning between these two words? Why is a jet powered with a 'jet-engine' until one of them falls off and then it becomes a motor? Why is it that when the engine in our car won't start we get out and check the motor?
Nobody stranger
What is the difference in meaning between these two words?
Dunno if this'll help or not, but I've never heard an electric motor called an electric engine and I've never heard a difference engine call a difference motor.
Engine is a very old word, meaning a useful device. There were a variety of "siege engines" for instance.We now speak of computer "search engines."
Obviously a motor is something that produces movement.
Why is it that when the engine in our car won't start we get out and check the motor?
I know my car has a starter motor and a windshield wiper motor, but it also has a "CHECK ENGINE" light. And in my Webster's, no snickering from the crowd among the various definitions of each, I find:
engine n. 1. A machine that uses energy, esp. energy from a fuel, to perform work.
motor n. 1. A machine that converts electric energy into mechanical power. 2. An internal-combustion engine.
Are the first definitions the same or different here?
Abagogo:
I learned from somewhere many years ago that an engine used a fuel internally to produce work, while a motor took the energy from a fuel source at a distant location and produced work with it.
Internal combustion engine, steam engine, but electric motor. The fuel comsumed by the motor might have been combusted or fissioned (I suspect I am gonna hear about verbing a noun on this, but if something is fissionable it ought to fission!) many miles away.
I note that a steam engine is technically not an internal combustion engine, but the combustion generally occurs very close to the mechanical parts for the purposes of efficiency.
TEd
TEd has basically got it. They way it was explained to me by my father, who was a railroader, was that an engine carries with it its own fuel, whereas a motor is powered by an outside energy source to which it has to be connected. Hence, on the old Pennsylvania Railroad, they had steam and diesel engines which pulled trains, but the big locomotives which were mostly used for passenger trains and which ran by connecting to the electric lines over the track were called "motors" in official railroad parlance. The big black ones which ran out of Penn Station in NYC were the GG1 model. The power pickup, which looked sort of like a folding laundry drying rack, which made contact with the overhead power lines, was called a 'pantograph'. Good word for your collection of oddities.
Incidentally, a diesel locomotive does not directly drive itself by the diesel engine. The diesel engine is actually a large generator which provides power to the electric traction motors which drive each set of wheels. Thus you have both types of device in one large machine.
I reckon it would've been bloody confusing growing up in New Zealand.
frunstance: While watching cowdy movies - didn't you get confused when somebody mentioned engines and indians in the one sentence?
stells
I learned from somewhere many years ago that an engine used a fuel internally to produce work, while a motor took the energy from a fuel source at a distant location and produced work with it.
This would be great if the internal combustion engine in your car weren't also referred to as a motor.
If it works in practice but not in theory, something must be wrong with the practice
Just to prove I once studied new math, motors are a subset of engines.
motors are a subset of engines.
That's the definition I like. Motors turns something else into motion; engines can do other thangs.
This may not be true in all areas. Local laws may vary.
I often wonder how much use the new math is to the average kid. Hard to learn, few immediate uses.Not one in a thousand will ever be a mathematician. I remember eighth grade teacher telling us :" All horses are quadrupeds, but not all quadrupeds are horses."
I use that analogy far more often than subsets.
Well i had new math-- long before most, since my school used to cut cost for text books by always offering to be a pilot for new books and curiculums (more work for the teachers, but the teachers where all nuns, and didn't have much say.)
since i had new math, when my cousins still had old math, i saw a bit of both.. i like new math. some stuff, at the time seemed total stupid-- like numbering systems.. I could see no use for binary or octal.. but 20 odd years later, when i got a computer in 1982, and had to use binary and hexidecimal, Bing! it all came back to me, clear as a bell.
and learning Hex was so easy, since i already was primed to learn numbering systems! i can add and subtract in binary-- i don't have to convert to decimal, and i can do very simple multiplicaion, (times 2!) too! and i am one of a select group that knows octal! and as Musick, and some others know, i even know octal jokes! (request by PM)
i loved new math for the most part... and still love math!
>This would be great if the internal combustion engine in your car weren't also referred to as a motor.
It isn't (at least by me.)
I really hated it. I could do arithmetic, but I didn't do it like they wanted. And there were some things it took me a long time to understand. I think my main problem is that I wasn't psychologically prepared for it.
k
I even tried to learn fractal math, but it defeated me.
This would be great if the internal combustion engine in your car weren't also referred to as a motor.
Good that it is, too, otherwise General Motors might have named their company General Engines and then where would we all be?
As it is often the case with "near synonyms", the difference between the terms is not so much in the objects they denote than in the point of view they represent: "Engine" evokes the fact that the contraption in cause is the fruit of human genius (rather than nature), while "motor" is the pragmatic, functional word for the "black box" that drives something.
Well said wsieber.
[trophy]
I wish I had said that. I wish I had thought that.
I wish I could have thought that.
Well said wsieber.
Indeed. Can you provide some other examples, please?
otherwise General Motors might have named their company General Engines and then where would we all be?
Watching the mother of all commercial litigation over the rights to the GE logo.
Ah, yes, well--I'd rather not go there, thank you. What about house vs. home usages? I was trying to help a non-native-English speaker with these yesterday, and I know I didn't do a complete job. Do any of you-all say, for ex., "Let's go to my home"? In what circumstances do people use each of these words?
Homes are a subset of houses. "It takes a heap of living to make a house a home".
First of all, to me, a house is just a structure while a home has emotional connotations. These can be good or bad, since everyone had different home experiences.
I usually ask people to "Come over to my house" not "Come to my home". Or if I'm describing something about it, I use "My house is really small" not "My home is really small". But when I get in the door, I shout "I'm home!" because it's more than just "I am now in this building", I mean something more like "I am in this building and I can relax now and pet the cat and take my shoes off and have a snack...Come and hug me!" Similarly, "leaving the house" is just going out for errands or something, but "leaving home" is permanent, it implies that you're moving out on your own.
Home to me is a personal space.. it is not always a tangible, but a house is a tangilbe object. I own a house. i have never felt at home in it. i have lived in it for 20+ years, and its not my home. (i am actually in the process of selling it!)
for some people, home is where i hang my had-- any temporary resting place. for some home invokes a sense of belonging and welcome, childhood innocence, a place where they will not only always take you in, but will welcome you.
home is where the heart is is as true a statement as was ever made. a hut, sans running water, heating, or electricity can be a fine home, and a mansion, sans love, might never be.
home is where the heart is is as true a statement as was ever made. a hut, sans running water, heating, or electricity can be a fine home, and a mansion, sans love, might never be.
Getting off topic a bit here, but... Folksinger Richard Thompson has a wonderful song called "A Heart Needs a Home."
It was originally recorded with his then-wife Linda. He is now divorced. I saw him in concert a couple of years ago, and his grown son Teddy was in the back-up band. At one point in the show all the band left the stage except for Richard and Teddy Thompson, and they sang "A Heart Needs a Home" as a duet. It was one of the most beautiful musical moments I have ever experienced. Listening to them sing I completely forgot myself -- just marvelous.
Well said, Helen. I hate real estate agents and other types who have been brainwashed by the real estate people who say to you, "You have a lovely home." Phooey. This is just occupational jargon. I may have a nice house, but no one but me and whoever else lives here knows what kind of home it is.
I found the foregoing discussion rather idiosyncratic: in Switzerland, where more than half of the population happily live in rented accomodation, house is not really a synonym of home - not to mention the considerable number of human beings all over the world who live in tents.
house is not really a synonym of home
When I lived in an apartment, I tried very hard to remember to say "Come over to my place" instead of "my house" because I knew it wasn't really a house. I eventually gave up. Most people understand "my house" to mean "where I live" whether it's actually a house or some other structure.
When I lived in an apartment, I tried very hard to remember to say "Come over to my place" instead of "my house" because I knew it wasn't really a house. I eventually gave up.
I had a sign in my apartment. Instead of the usual, "Home Sweet Home", mine read "Apartment Sweet Apartment. It helped me keep things in perspective too. It just never felt like "home" to me.