motoring

[A. Maberry]

I seem to recall a slang usage of "Let's motor on out of here" or
something similar meaning simply "Let's go" (and my favorite variant of
same "Let's motate". Most probably these have all gone to slang heaven,
along with "motoring"="driving" in word heaven.

allen
maberry at u.washington.edu


On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Mark A Mandel wrote:

> Speaking of words that have gone to word heaven, Safire includes among
> them "motoring", now supplanted by "driving". There is a current
> billboard for, iirc, the PT Cruiser, bearing at the bottom the motto
> "Let's motor!". Now, the PT series is deliberately retro in design, and
> this phrase is tagged on the billboard as a trademark or service mark or
> something of the sort. Obviously the advertiser is using the word for
> the very characteristic that brings Safire to call it moribund.
> Nevertheless, this ad campaign must produce some current citations for
> it, and may even kickstart the old engine into rolling over a little
> longer.
>
> -- Mark A. Mandel
>    Linguist at Large
>