An electric motor is not an engine.

All engines are motors, but not all motors are engines. "Engine" only categorizes the type of motor into a certain group based on what type of energy it converts into force. An electrical motor converts electricity into force, therefor it is not an engine.

 

Borrowed from the web, a gasoline engine is given as an example of a type of motor;

According to Merriam-Webster:

• Engine is defined as a machine for converting any of various forms of energy into mechanical force and motion.
• Motor is defined as any of various power units that develop energy or impart motion such as a small compact engine, a gasoline engine, or a rotating machine that transforms electrical energy into mechanical energy.

 

Your information source is the KIA website?

 

The Scottish call a car a motor. Look everyone, he's got a new motor.

 

I'm in the "an engine is a subset of motors" camp. Not to mention all the vehicle manufactures that make ICE but have MOTOR in their name. Anybody heard of the Ford Motor Company? General Motors?

 

Way back, peeps called motorcycles motors, motorcops may still. Don't use 2 stroke oil in a 4 stroke engine/motor/ICE. Don't ask, I was younger.

 

Here is the Oxford dictionary definition:

https://www.google.com/search?q=moto...obile&ie=UTF-8

 

It's Ford's fault. Otherwise they'd be FEC and not FMC.

 

After traveling throughout the world, there are nuances with naming car parts (in the UK.....the Bonnet instead of the Hood, the Boot instead of the Trunk, etc.) and more differences elsewhere. In many places the power plant is called a motor, and the car a "motor car"........personally, I have an engine in my car that uses motor oil. So, what does this prove? Absolutely nothing except that it's something to talk about.

 

 

Under the hood is called an engine compartment and not a motor compartment. I tend to use the term interchanablly. While not relevant to a car I bought a Stih; chainsaw a few years back and it was a MS261. I never really understood the MS until I googled it and it is what the german manufacturer used as an abbreviation for Motor Saw. DOn't think calling it a engine saw would make much sense.

 

Ever hear of a electric engine???
Electric motor and gas engine----technically.

 

Soooooo...how many motors are there in a C6?

 

I don't believe in terminology. Success is measured by the uselessness of a topic. Call it a corn cob if you want.

 

An electric motor is a motor, and a gas engine is a motor also. So there's that, technically speaking. Not sure why everyone is so fixated on an electric motor being the only type of motor. If it was, we wouldn't need to say electric to describe what kind of motor we are talking about.

 

Everyone is giving reasonable answers without addressing the original conversation that precipitated the question… was someone saying an engine doesn’t become a motor until it reaches a specific hp figure? I’d like to hear the rationale behind THAT statement if someone actually made it.

 

What’s the difference between a motor and an engine?

As with almost any word, it all depends how far you go back in time for your definition…
By Sarah JensenAs technologies and devices evolve, language must stay on its toes if we expect to understand each other when we talk about them. English-speakers are particularly flexible at adapting to progress. They’re willing to coin new terms, modify old meanings, and allow words that are no longer useful to pass from common usage. “The etymologies of ‘motor’ and ‘engine’ reflect the way language evolves to represent what’s happening in the world,” says MIT literature professor Mary Fuller.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “motor” as a machine that supplies motive power for a vehicle or other device with moving parts. Similarly, it tells us that an engine is a machine with moving parts that converts power into motion. “We use the words interchangeably now,” says Fuller. “But originally, they meant very different things.”

“Motor” is rooted in the Classical Latin movere, “to move.” It first referred to propulsive force, and later, to the person or device that moved something or caused movement. “As the word came through French into English, it was used in the sense of ‘initiator,’” says Fuller. “A person could be the motor of a plot or a political organization.” By the end of the 19th century, the Second Industrial Revolution had dotted the landscape with steel mills and factories, steamships and railways, and a new word was needed for the mechanisms that powered them. Rooted in the concept of motion, “motor” was the logical choice, and by 1899, it had entered the vernacular as the word for Duryea and Olds’ newfangled horseless carriages.

“Engine” is from the Latin ingenium: character, mental powers, talent, intellect, or cleverness. In its journey through French and into English, the word came to mean ingenuity, contrivance, and trick or malice. “In the 15th century, it also referred to a physical device: an instrument of torture, an apparatus for catching game, a net, trap, or decoy,” says Fuller.

In the early 19th century, the meanings of motor and engine had already begun to converge, both referring to a mechanism providing propulsive force. “The first recorded use of ‘engine’ to mean an electrical machine driven by a petroleum motor occurs in 1853,” says Fuller.

Today, the words are virtually synonymous. “Language evolves to take on new tasks,” she explains. “Without thinking about it, we adapt to new meanings and leave the old behind.” We talk about our computer’s dashboard, unaware that in the 1840s, the word referred to the board at the front of a carriage that stopped mud from being splashed on the coachman. Similarly, the term “search engine” harks back to the older meaning of “engine” as a contrivance, suggests Fuller. First used in 1984 to mean “a piece of hardware or software,” the phrase may have been informed by Charles Babbage’s 1822 use of “engine” to mean a calculating machine.

The related word “engineer” was first used in 1380 to describe the constructor of military engines like siege works and catapults, and by the early 18th century, referred specifically to the maker of engines and machines. The OED lists a second definition of “engineer” as well. “It is synonymous with the older usage meaning ‘artifice,’” says Fuller. “An engineer is an author or designer of something, a person who contrives a plot, a schemer.” A definition one can only hope will soon pass from common usage.

 

I looked on my computer dashboard to find the right search engine to define motor, which was on the same page as motivate that moved me to write this electrifying response.

 

You are correct! As a retired electrician, a motor is an electrical device.

Tom

 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “motor” as a machine that supplies motive power for a vehicle or other device with moving parts. Similarly, it tells us that an engine is a machine with moving parts that converts power into motion.