Technical Do you say Engine or Motor?

And don’t forget electric starter engine and slot car engine


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Yeah, I was hoping on it.....

 

At the end of the day does it really matter if you say motor or engine ?

It probably has a lot to do where you were raised, different words meaning the same thing. HRP

 

I guess this is what Chevrolet was teaching her "mechanics" back in 1936, at least for the models with the interesting "K-Y" frame.
https://forums.aaca.org/topic/276933-chevrolet-production-late-1930s-just-a-picture/

See them being build in Flint Michigan here -

 

Ha...if it won't fire, guess it don't matter what you call it!

 

It's funny how it does to some.....

 

What about Mill

 

I was just wondering that myself!!! Motors run on volts, engines have all kinds of mechanical bits, cyclic movements and a variety of power sources, like steam even. But a mill? As in a stamp mill with reciprocating parts? Or what? Gary

 

Mills grind grain but or powered by a motor or an engine

 

Ok what's a water powered wheel called, as in a dam.

 

About 60 years ago I was at a gas station and some hot dog pulled in with his '50 Olds. Being a dorky high school kid I said "what ya got in it?" He looked down his nose at me and said "a mill". So there ya go.

 

I don't think the term used is that critical, and admit I have referred ti the "motive energy generators" in my vehicles as either the "engine" kr the "motor" depending on how cultured I happened to want to appear, but just to maintain my standard of originality, also call them the "cooker".
As long as they fire up when the key is turned, sound good, and go like they're stolen, who cares?

 

A stamp mill is used to crush rock into smaller bits prior to chemical refining. Gary

 

Dang! There's one up the street from my house and I was hoping that since it is a mill, I could put it in my car. I guess that won't work.

 

Not again!!!.....

 

Motor Mill

 

Is that the same as a mill motor?

 

I was taught that an engine runs on fuel and a motor is electric.


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All engines are motors. But it doesn't work the other way. Engine by definition, means thermal energy is turned into mechanical work. I usually say "motor"...

 

Sad but I'm sorry
you are another who was taught wrong.

 

Let's look at this etymologically.

Engine has a suggestion of "clever device" to it. It is related to words like ingenuity and genius, which come from generate, genesis, etc. There is a sense of invention to it, a sense of crafted complexity. Hence steam engine, siege engine, even fire engine. Charles Babbage's mechanical difference engine encapsulates that sense perfectly.

Motor has a more purely functional connotation. It is simply something which produces motion. It is one of a fairly obvious set of words related to move.

My problem with electric propulsion is that there isn't enough to an electric motor – even less to a battery – to make it an engine. There is none of that Frankensteinian golem-like sense of mechanical life which make proper engines so cool; and hence, ironically if you think about it, instead a feeling of soullessness.


On a different point, I think the meaning in expressions like motorcycle, motor car, motorboat, etc. is more "self-propelled" in the sense of producing its own motion by whatever means, than "possessing a motor". The British usage of motor in the automotive sense refers to the entire vehicle, as an abbreviation of motor car, notably as in the Thames Valley mo'-ah. Hence the now defunct weekly magazine, The Motor.

 

Do we put a blower or a supercharger or a huffer on our motors? I mean, engines? I mean, mills?

Did Chuck Berry motivate or engivate over that hill when he saw Maybelline in that Coupe DeVille?

 

A long time ago (30 years?), I was reading a similar discussion. The following was the argument I liked best and has been my guidance on this issue ever since.

When Cale Yarborough stops saying that he "blow'd up his motor on the backstretch", that's when I'll stop calling it a motor!!

I realize that Cale probably doesn't make that statement much anymore, but I still like to use "motor", ...... kind of a tribute to Cale and the good old days of NASCAR!!

 

Those are the good old days of NASCAR! They'd wreck each other trying to win, then try to beat the hell out of each other when the cars came to a stop.