Reading, Writing, Thinking

The landau, in fact, was a carriage (first built in Landau, Germany) with a top that could be folded down, and the landau roof we know on cars has an ornamental doodad that looks very much like the hinge on the old landau.

The landaulet was a smaller carriage, a coupé, with the same type of roof. The coupe, as we now spell it (from the French for “cut”), is supposed to be a closed two-seater (unlike my MG, which is open most of the time), although it is commonly used for anything with an uncomfortable rear seat. The coupé de ville is a larger car, enclosed, with an open section for the driver. You've seen them in movies. (This isn't at all what we can now see in the Cadillac pre-owned lot. For Cadillac, “DeVille” was just a trim designation.) The Deuce coupe is a specific model: the 1932 (the “deuce” is for the year) Ford Model B, one of the first V-8's and the original hot rod.

That coupé de ville is one type of a limousine, whose name comes from a supposed similarity of its profile to a type of hood worn in the area of Limoges, France. The similarity to the Limousin hood vanishes when the driver moves into the main cabin of the car, even if he is separated by a window from the passengers. In any case, many of what we now call airport limos are not so luxurious (see “van” in a couple of paragraphs).

The sedan is what the British call a saloon, a car with room for at least two adults each in front and rear. The name has nothing to do with the French city, but comes from the sedan chair, which in turn gets its name from the Italian sede, “chair.” The sedan chair was also once known as a “go-cart.”

Sedans are pretty popular, but in the school parking lot they seem to be outnumbered by minivans. We understand the “mini” part there, but what is a van? Again we can go to the British terminology, where it is called a caravan; we have shortened it, but it is still the sort of vehicle (again, originally drawn by horses) that one might see in a caravan of traders.

Before minivans, of course, suburban moms drove station wagons. I actually saw one of the earliest station wagons in Reno, a wooden motorized coach custom-built for a hotel, so it could meet passengers at the railroad station and carry them up the mountain to the hotel.

A “truck” started as a small wheel, but the meaning got transferred to the small-wheeled cart used to carry heavy loads, and thence to what so many people in the South drive. The “pickup” part comes from the original purpose, to make deliveries and collections (pick-ups). But the “truck” has now made its full circle, in reference to the wheel sets for skateboards. (To be fair, it never lost that meaning on the railroads.)

And finally, when we all get on at once, the omnibus (Latin, “for all”) has shortened itself to bus, sharing a root, if not a route, with the busboy.