The Oxford English Dictionary, the principal dictionary of the English language, defines the word car as “a road vehicle powered by a motor (usually an internal combustion engine) designed to carry a driver and a small number of passengers, and usually having two front and two rear wheels, esp. for private, commercial, or leisure use.”
Its online counterpart, Oxford Dicotionaries.com pegs the current definition as “A road vehicle, typically with four wheels, powered by an internal combustion engine and able to carry a small number of people.”
Jaguar Land Rover is pushing to redefine the meaning of the word via an application to both the Oxford English Dictionary and Oxoford University Publishing, producer of the online dictionary.
Thanks in no small part to technology that sees motor vehicles having other propulsion sources aside from the erstwhile internal combustion engine, JLR feels that it’s time to update how we view a car. To rectify this, JLR is batting for the dictionary to add “other powertrain rouces, including electric motors”, to the definition.
All this talk of changing the word’s meaning stems from the Jaguar I-Pace fully electric vehicle garnering this year’s World Car of the Year and European Car of the Year titles.
While it does have four wheels and car ferry a small numb er of passengers (five, to be exact), it is powered by two fully electric motors. These give the EV sports car-like performance without harming the environment.
As Jaguar waits for the applcations to be processed and acted upn, it is encouraging people to send in their thoughts on how the word car should be defined.
What do you think?
