Vehicle

How to spell vehicle

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce vehicle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vehicle mean?

1. nounA machine, such as a car, lorry, or van, used for transporting people or goods.
2. nounA medium or means through which something is expressed, achieved, or transmitted.

Vehicle in a sentence

• The recovery firm towed the broken-down vehicle off the motorway.

• The charity used the gala as a vehicle for raising public awareness.

• Every vehicle entering the depot must display a valid permit.

• The trust fund served as a vehicle for passing wealth to the children.

Where does vehicle come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin vehiculum, which meant a cart, carriage, or any means of transport. That noun was built on the verb vehere, meaning 'to carry' or 'to convey', combined with the suffix -culum that named the instrument or means by which something was done; a vehiculum was quite literally 'a thing for carrying'. The same vehere root is the ancestor of a surprising family of English words, including 'convey', 'convex', and even 'vex', and it is distantly related to the idea of a 'way' along which things travel. English picked the word up in the early 1600s, partly through French véhicule, and at first it described any conveyance from a cart to a sled. The spelling trap is the silent 'h' tucked after the 've': it is a relic of the Latin vehere that survives on the page even though the modern voice glides straight past it.

How the word is built

• vehi- (from Latin vehere: to carry, convey)
• -cle (from -culum, an instrumental suffix meaning 'a means of')