Timeline for "Machine" as a 1920s American term for "car"
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 12 at 12:03 | comment | added | Heartspring | @Laurel - from the tag synonyms page, it looks like you were the one who handled my flag about tagging-consistency. The action listed on that page looks correct, but the [twentieth-century-english] tag I created doesn't seem to exist anymore. <....com/questions/tagged/twentieth-century-language> redirects to <....com/questions/tagged/twentieth-century-english>, but is resultless. The original [twentieth-century-language] still shows up when searching on the tags page and in revision histories and on questions. Other related weird stuff is also happening. | |
| Dec 2, 2023 at 22:45 | comment | added | Dan | Travelling around Mexico in the 1970s 'maquina' meant car - and still does in some Latin American countries I think. | |
| Dec 2, 2023 at 21:25 | history | edited | Heartspring |
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| Jul 17, 2022 at 14:58 | comment | added | Lambie | Do yuu think that Hammet would have used that if it weren't common? | |
| Jul 17, 2022 at 14:52 | comment | added | Hot Licks | My grandmother always used this term, in the 50s & 60s. Her daughter (my aunt) did too, occasionally. | |
| Jul 17, 2022 at 14:45 | answer | added | Greybeard | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jul 17, 2022 at 13:46 | answer | added | Tom Fitzgerald | timeline score: 2 | |
| Aug 18, 2019 at 16:01 | comment | added | painfulenglish | Machine is even used in a Seinfeld episode. 1990s, but certainly not 1920s. getyarn.io/yarn-clip/dbb58c9c-8462-4571-a71c-762ff31fb383 | |
| Aug 18, 2019 at 15:23 | comment | added | John Dancause | My grandmother wrote in her diary, "Dad took the machine into town today" . Always lo | |
| Aug 21, 2016 at 22:25 | comment | added | Hot Licks | "Machine" is the term my father's mother always used, when referring to an automobile (and her daughter -- my aunt -- used it too, until later in her life, though I don't recall my father using the term). I'm thinking my grandmother was born about 1880, in the rural Louisville, KY area, with "roots" in that area going back a couple of generations, and a Dutch background before that. I'm guessing she had an 8th grade education. | |
| Aug 21, 2016 at 21:45 | answer | added | Al Rodbell | timeline score: 3 | |
| Feb 6, 2012 at 4:33 | vote | accept | Nate Eldredge | ||
| Jan 28, 2012 at 21:40 | comment | added | Alain Pannetier Φ | This could possibly be under the influence of Italian, in which the word for car is "macchina". After all the period you mention is the prohibition (1920 to 33), an era during which the Italian Americans had a prominent role. | |
| Jan 28, 2012 at 20:29 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackEnglish/status/163358036134592512 | ||
| Jan 28, 2012 at 18:29 | comment | added | Nate Eldredge | @FumbleFingers: In the usages you cite, context is used to make it clear what kind of machine is in question. In Hammett's writing, the characters use "machine" by itself without further clarification. If I said to you, "There is a machine outside my house," you would wonder what kind of machine (it could be a wood chipper, or a discarded piece of factory equipment), but Hammett's characters would immediately understand that I was talking about a car. | |
| Jan 28, 2012 at 18:16 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | Just about any "mechanism" can be a "machine", and it's hardly archaic. Here will be hundreds of written references to souped-up computers being called mean machines. | |
| Jan 28, 2012 at 18:13 | answer | added | Barrie England | timeline score: 10 | |
| Jan 28, 2012 at 17:58 | history | asked | Nate Eldredge | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
