automobile

Pluralautomobiles

Formsautomobiles, automobiling, automobiled

1. 1
   nounAustraliaCanadaNew ZealandPhilippinesUScountable

   A motor vehicle that moves on the ground under its own stored power, built to carry a driver, a few passengers, and a small amount of cargo.

   Early automobiles were expensive and difficult to start by hand.

   She parked the automobile outside the office and hurried in.

   Similarcar, auto, motorcar

   Note

   A French borrowing whose parts spell out what was new about the machine: Greek autós, "self", joined to mobile, "moving". The word belongs to the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines, and shorter rivals stand beside it: car, auto, motorcar, motor. It also works as a modifier before another noun, as when Philip J. Bushnell (2013) writes of the risk of a fatal automobile accident.

2. 2
   adjective

   Moving under its own power rather than being pushed, pulled, or driven along by something else.

   The factory produced an automobile torpedo capable of driving itself toward a target.

   Nineteenth-century inventors competed to create truly automobile vehicles.

   Similarself-propelled

   Note

   The literal meaning, closest to the Greek and Latin parts behind the noun for a car. It stands before a noun and does not take more or most. Nikola Tesla, in My Inventions (1919), recalls proposing an automobile carriage that, left to itself, would perform a variety of operations. Its close synonym is autokinetic. Because the noun shares its spelling, read such phrases as "self-moving", not "belonging to a car."

3. 3
   verbdatedintransitive

   To travel somewhere by car.

   On Sundays the family would automobile out to the lake.

   They automobiled across three states that summer.

   Similardrive, motor

   Note

   A verb from the years when driving was a pastime in its own right. In Notions and Fancy Goods (1909), automobiling appears in a list of extravagances beside yachting, attending the races and playing poker for high stakes. It takes no object: one automobiles somewhere, never automobiles something. Its forms are regular (automobiled, automobiling). Today it reads as period color, so in ordinary prose say drive or go by car.

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