HAVING A WORD FOR IT...:

Several languages cannot match the many words English has available to identify different sizes, types, and uses of vehicles - car, lorry, bus, tractor, taxi, moped, truck, and so on - and might have just one word for all of these.

There is in fact no single word in English for the driver of all kinds of motor vehicles - motorist being restricted to private cars, and driver being unacceptable for motorcycles - a lexical gap which greatly worried the British Automobile Association in 1961. It was felt that such a word would be useful, and they therefore asked for suggestions. Among the 500 they received were: autoist, roadist, chassimover, mobilist, wheelist, doice (Driver of Internal Combustion Engine), pupamotor (Person Using Power-Assisted Means of Travel on Roads), licentiat (Licensed Internal Combustion Engine Navigator Trained in Automobile Tactics). However, none of these ingenious ideas has survived.

Hence, this week's poll (to the left of the blog) gives you a chance to vote a name for the motorcycle rider - one among the seven that you think will be more appropriate - since we are, (according to David Crystal) yettt to find a suitable name to describe the motorcyclist!

Go ahead... Get your imagination working. All the best...!

[Excerpted from: Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. CUP, 1987]