"machine" 'car, automobile'

[Wilson Gray]

On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 8:57 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "machine" 'car, automobile'
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> As Chuck Berry put it in 1958:
>
> "Climb into my _machine_ and we will cruise on out"
>
> -Wilson
>
> On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Arnold M. Zwicky
> <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>> Subject:      "machine" 'car, automobile'
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> from Wilson Gray back on 6 June:
>>
>>  >"Machine" for "automobile" is still hip in BE slang, as well as
>> "'chine," also used as a verb meaning, roughly, "drive like a maniac." <
>>
>> there's a possible subtlety here that i didn't comment on at the time:
>> the distinction between a word's having the meaning 'car,
>> automobile' (as in "my machine's parked in the driveway") and the
>> word's sometimes being used to refer to cars or automobiles (as in
>> "that's a mean machine you got there").  it isn't always easy to tell
>> how the word's being used.
>>
>> on another front, i checked out "machine" in a few sources: not in
>> DARE or in Smitherman, but  Majors, Juba to Jive (not the most
>> reliable of sources), does have an entry:
>>   (1950s-1960s) an automobile, one's car
>> citing p. 71 of David Claerbaut, Black Jargon in White America (1972).
>>
>> arnold
>>
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>
>
> --
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> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
>  -Sam'l Clemens
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
 -Sam'l Clemens

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