"machine" 'car, automobile'

[Clai Rice]

 <machin> is the standard Haitian Creole for "car".

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wilson Gray [mailto:hwgray at GMAIL.COM]
> Sent: Monday, July 21, 2008 7:57 PM
> 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:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > 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
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> 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
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org