Re: engine vs. motors vs. mills

[Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004, Jerry Casper wrote:

> > > I always flinched a little when I hear people call
> > an "internal combustion
> > > engine" a "motor".  

>   So what about the old expression " mill ", I've read
> some antique books using the expression " he worked
> all night on the mill under the hood ". I guess sort
> of like a thrashing machine? LOL. Just another
> expression I'd heard, anyone know where it came from ?

Likely it came from the fact that "mill" got applied to some
of the oldest of man-made mechanical contraptions (another one
of those words...).

Charles Babbage designed a complex automatic calculator (almost,
but not quite, a computer!) in 1840's? and he called the guts
of it, that did the intricate addition etc, "the mill", numbers
were the grist, got milled, then output.

If you track the earliest use of (engine, motor, mill,
contraption,...) in English, you'll find they got swiped from

greek or latin probably 300 - 400 or more years ago.