1903 N.Y. Times 24 Feb. 11/2 The scooter is a small 12-foot spoon-bottomed boat, having steel runners and mutton-legged sail.

1904 Sci. Amer. 5 Mar. 201/1 Incredible speed is attained by the larger and more completely equipped scooters.

1904 Sci. Amer. 5 Mar. 201/2 There are..few more interesting sights seen than those afforded by a scooter plunging at full speed from the ice into the water.

1909 Cent. Dict. Suppl. at Ice-scooter. These scooters may be run alternately through water and over ice.

1927 G. Bradford Gloss. Sea Terms 151/1 Scooter, an amphibious craft, shallow and beamy, equipped with runners beneath and rigged with a jib and mainsail. It is used as an ice boat, particularly on Great South Bay, Long Island. It is capable of crossing patches of open water.

1966 Whig-Standard (Kingston, Ont.) 13 Jan. 2/6 A provincial police diver today located an ice-scooter owned by a local insurance agent who vanished here last night.

1919 Times 21 Feb. 11/2 The war has produced ‘P’ boats and ‘Q’ boats and ‘U’ boats, but the wildest of all wild things is the ‘scooter’, professionally known as the coastal motor-boat.

1929 F. C. Bowen Sea Slang 118 Scooter, a coastal motor boat in the war.

1948 J. Steinbeck Russ. Jrnl. vi. 116 There were boat races on the river, little water-scooters with outboard motors.

1958 Times 21 Jan. 8/5 (heading) Man on sea scooter believed drowned.

1958 Times 21 Jan. 8/5 (heading) Mr. John Penn.., believed to have been drowned..while testing a water scooter at West Mersea, Essex.

1976 Vacation Fun in Dearborn (Dearborn, Mich., Times-Herald) Summer Pedal boats and water scooters on Lakes Three and Six.

1919 Times 21 Feb. 11/2 The ‘scooter’ we knew before the war was a new terror to the pavement.

1919 C. Orr Glorious Thing xix. 237 A brightly painted scooter.

1921 Spectator 2 July 8/1 Must you not use first one foot then another on your scooter, lest you get ‘scooter leg’.

1930 Punch 19 Mar. 331/1 A gutter-snipe negotiating Park Lane on his home-made scooter.

1939 J. Joyce Finnegans Wake 191 A youth those reporters so pettitily wanted as gamefellow that they asked his mother for ittle earps brupper to let him tome to Tindertarten, pease, and bing his scooter 'long.

1943 D. Powell Time to be Born (new ed.) iv. 79 The first twenty years of their existence which had been wasted in marbles, dolls, hoop-rolling, and scooter-racing.

1961 Toys & Fancy Goods Aug. 22 Two pavement scooters..with red frame, yellow wheels and white grips.

1917 Autocar 20 Jan. 60/1 For some months past it has been known in this country that the ‘scooter’ in America has developed into something rather beyond the child's plaything so popular in the British Isles. Until quite recently, however, the American motor-driven ‘scooter’ has not been seen in London.

1919 Model Engineer & Electrician 27 Feb. 142/1 A scooter of this type can cover 100 miles on a gallon of petrol.

1944 R. Chandler Lady in Lake v. 30 An anxious-looking bird thumped past on a power-scooter.

1957 Times 19 Nov. 11/3 The rising popularity of new types of machines—the scooter and the moped.

1971 Daily Tel. 16 Dec. 1/3 Safety helmets are to be made compulsory for riders and passengers of solo motor cycles, scooters and mopeds.

1917 Little Folks Sept. p. vi. (advt.) The free-wheel auto~scooter propelled by pedal.

1919 I. F. Marcosson S.O.S.: America's Miracle in France vi. 154 The vastness of these Depots is such that an inspection on foot..is out of the question. They are so criss-crossed with rails that you must use a ‘Scooter’, which is a motor-driven hand-car fitted for standard-gauge tracks... Every important official has his own ‘Scooter’ and you can see them scooting over the place at all hours of the day and night.

1930 ‘A. Armstrong’ Taxi v. 48 There were still a large number of two-cylinder Renaults (called ‘scooters’) plying for hire.

1935 N. Ersine Underworld & Prison Slang 64 Scooter, a rum-running car.

1948 ‘J. Evans’ Halo for Satan vi. 78 ‘We'll use your scooter, Mac... Where's she parked?’..I wondered how they knew I had a car.

1953 Sun (Baltimore) (B ed.) 15 June 4/2 A new $1,000 ‘flying scooter’ powered by a 12-horse~power engine for the ‘people's car’ (Volkswagen), has been making test flights from a forest clearing south of Hamburg.

1953 Sun (Baltimore) (B ed.) 15 June 4/2 The scooter has five or eight vanes, radiating from a circular passenger cabin which stands on three wheels.

1961 E. Partridge Dict. Slang (ed. 5) II. 1261/1 Scooter.., a single-deck bus; a driver-only bus: busmen's: since ca. 1945.

1963 Daily Progress (Charlottesville, Va.) 28 June 1/6 An aerospace firm has come up with something it calls a space scooter, a one-man platform with handlebars designed for crater hopping and crag climbing on the moon.

1971 A. Diment Think Inc. iv. 70 A scooter truck, that strange bastard little vehicle with a bulbous cab married to a small, pick-up body.

1972 N.Y. Times 3 Nov. 14/4 Fleets of flag-bedecked scooter-buses.