I know I'll catch some flack but here goes anyway... 111 years ago William Walter and Bill got it wrong, when the named they're new company Harley-Davidson MOTOR Company...sure all the 4 wheeled vehicles of the day were called motorcars, but they got it wrong too...Merriam-Webster calls a motor a devise which produces power when technically a motor is electrical and engine is internal combustion...look it up...MW "Internal Combustion Motor = engine"
sad but true...
please send all complaints to Helen Wait @ 1-800 eat ****

 

mo·tor
ˈmōtər/Submit
noun
1.
a machine, esp. one powered by electricity or internal combustion, that supplies motive power for a vehicle or for some other device with moving parts.
adjective

 

You have to go back to 1900 vernacular to understand the reasoning from bi-cycle to motor-cycle.

 

I've always been bothered by that technicality... a motor is more accurately used in the context of 'electric motor' whereas engine is associated with internal combustion.

parking in a driveway and driving on the parkway

fricken stupid english language

 

Tradition

 

This is the way it is used in the English language...always has been.

Motorcycle
motorboat
motorcar
Ford motor company
General motors
DeLorean motor company
Morgan motor company
Yamaha motor corporation


Google "motor company" and look at the list...not an "electric motor" in the bunch

 

While we are nit-picking...

One does not DRIVE a motorcycle. One RIDES a motorcycle.

It bothers me when I see people on this forum saying they want to *test DRIVE* the new Harley.

 

Why is it a transmission and not a transmitter???

 

Way back when all the "motor" terms were being coined, I think that the term "engine" referred to things like steam engines- large industrial machines, like ships, locomotives, industrial power, etc.... So they started referring to the much smaller engines as motors. That's my story................

 

The way I learned it, a motor was powered by energy from an outside source, like electricity. An engine contained its own source of fuel, like gas. Yeah, I know that there's a gas tank involved, but gas itself is not energy until it's inducted into the combustion system.
None of this really matters, we all know what we mean anyway.