Locomotive

How to spell locomotive

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce locomotive

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does locomotive mean?

1. nounA powered railway vehicle that pulls or pushes a train of carriages or wagons.
2. adjectiveRelating to or capable of movement from one place to another.

Locomotive in a sentence

• noun

  The museum restored a steam locomotive from the 1920s.

• adjective

  The physiotherapist assessed the patient's locomotive ability after surgery.

• noun

  The diesel locomotive hauled forty loaded freight wagons up the gradient.

• adjective

  The study compared the locomotive power of different muscle groups.

Where does locomotive come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built from two Latin pieces stitched together by scientists rather than inherited whole. The first part comes from locus, meaning 'a place', specifically from the phrase loco motivus, where loco is the ablative form meaning 'from a place'. The second part comes from movere, 'to move', the same root that gives English 'motion', 'motor', and 'remove'. Put together, the Latin idea was 'moving from one place to another', and an adjective 'locomotive' was used in the 1600s for anything capable of self-propelled movement. When the steam railway engine arrived in the early 1800s it was first called a 'locomotive engine', and the noun 'locomotive' was simply that phrase shortened down. The double trap in spelling is remembering the single 'c' in loco and the single 'm' in mot, since the word looks like it should bristle with doubled consonants but does not.

How the word is built

• loco- (from Latin locus: place)
• mot (from movere: to move)
• -ive (adjective/noun suffix)