History of the word "Car" (wagon, compare, 2000)

[jtur88]

When did the word "car" first become commonly used, instead of "automobile" or "motorcar" to describe what we today call a car?

The word "car", of course, predates by many centuries the automobile, but well into the 20th century, nearly everybody still used "automobile" in the vernacular. "Car" was ordinarly used a century ago to describe a much more generic concept, including a railroad car or a horse-drawn car or an elevator car.

[sinsativ]

I believe its short for "CAR" riage or "CAR" T

[Kangaroofarmer]

Car is derived from the latin Carrus (A Light Wagon).

[sandinmyshoes]

In some locales,it means crash and run.lol

[jtur88]

Since I posted this four years ago, there is now accessible information about the usage off words.

It appears that the word 'automobile' reached its peak in usage in USA and Britain at different times. The charts below compare 'car' with 'automobile', but the frequency of 'car' can be misleading, because it has many other aplications, beside the automobile. For example, the American 'railway car' is called a 'wagon' in Britain.

The charts below show that "automobile" reached its peak in America in the early 1930s, then went into great decline, replaced by 'car'. In Britain, "automobile" was always much less commonly used, and it peaked about a decade later, and is still used almost as much as it was then.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/grap...mobile%3B%2Cc0

https://books.google.com/ngrams/grap...mobile%3B%2Cc0