Motor

How to spell motor

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce motor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does motor mean?

1. nounA machine that converts energy, especially electricity or fuel, into mechanical motion.
2. adjectiveRelating to muscular movement or to the nerves that control it.
3. verbTo travel somewhere by car, often in a leisurely way.

Motor in a sentence

• noun

  The washing machine stopped because its motor had burned out.

• adjective

  The therapist worked on the toddler's fine motor skills.

• verb

  They planned to motor down the coast for the long weekend.

• noun

  An electric motor runs far more quietly than a petrol engine.

• adjective

  The disease gradually damages the motor neurons in the spine.

• verb

  On Sundays the couple liked to motor through the countryside.

Where does motor come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Motor comes straight from the Latin noun motor, meaning 'a mover' or 'one that sets in motion', which was built on the verb movere, 'to move', plus the agent ending -or that turns a verb into the doer of the action. The same movere root spread widely into English through words such as 'move', 'motion', 'remove' and 'emotion', so the family is large and familiar. English first borrowed motor in the 1400s in the abstract sense of something that produces movement, and for centuries it stayed fairly technical. The modern meaning, a machine that converts energy into mechanical motion, took hold in the 1800s alongside electrical and steam engineering. With the arrival of the petrol car around 1900, motor quickly attached itself to road vehicles, giving us 'motorist', 'motorway' and the British habit of using motor as a verb for driving. The spelling is reliably regular: the Latin -or ending simply carried over unchanged.

How the word is built

• mot- (from movere: to move)
• -or (agent suffix: one that does)