horseless carriage
2
9.6
- noun
- /ˈhɔrs.ləs ˈkær.ɪdʒ/
- Archaic
:
coche sin caballos
- One hundred years ago, the new horseless carriage was hailed as a clean technology for urban transportation.
- the first horseless carriage
- build a horseless carriage
Examples
-
Compare the first horseless carriage to today's Lexus.
Academic text (2005) -
I believe he invents the horseless carriage, your grace.
-
It's like a-- a horseless carriage!
-
Make an automobile rather than simply a horseless carriage.
Blog text (14) -
Eli was telling me about one of these invisible horseless carriage jobbies that damn near ran you down in the street.
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You got these magic kitchens, got them horseless carriages, these fancy old hemorrhoids.
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We once laughed at the horseless carriage, the aeroplane, the telephone, the electric light, vitamins, radio, and even television !
-
-The horseless carriage thingy.
-
Despite this, novelty in automobile design is limited to tinkering with details, and no radical departure from the basic approach has been seen since the introduction of the horseless carriage about 120 years ago:
Academic text (2006) -
The invention of the horseless carriage revolutionized transportation in the early 20th century.
Synonyms
A kind of early car that uses an engine to carry people
An early four-wheeled vehicle built in the late 1800s or early 1900s
Antonyms
How Old-fashioned
1
3.8
- Archaic
2
9.6
8
3.5
∞
1.0
53
3.1
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'an automobile' is directly and predictably derived from 'horseless' (without horses) combined with 'carriage' (a horse-drawn vehicle): a carriage without horses implies a vehicle that does not use horses. This is a regular, compositional compound following normal English word-formation, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily infer the intended historical sense.
Etymology
The term horseless carriage literally pictures a carriage with no horse pulling it. In the late 1800s people used it to describe the new cars, so the phrase came to mean 'automobile'.