vehicularadj.
/vᵻˈhɪkjᵿlə/, /viːˈhɪkjᵿlə/, U.S. /viˈhɪkjələr/ 1.
a. Of or relating to vehicles as a form of transport or conveyance for people or goods; designating such a vehicle; carried out in a vehicle or vehicles.
ΘΚΠ
society > travel > means of travel > a conveyance > vehicle > [adjective]
vehicular?1624
vehiculatory1851
society > travel > means of travel > a conveyance > vehicle > [adjective] > of the nature of or serving as vehicle
vehicular?1624
vehiculary1663
society > travel > means of travel > a conveyance > vehicle > [adjective] > performed by means of vehicle
vehicular1742
?1624 G. Chapman tr. Hymn to Venus in tr. Crowne Homers Wks. 90 Charriots, and all the frames vehiculare.
1656 T. Blount Glossographia Vehicular, pertaining to any instrument or engine of carriage.
1742 H. Fielding Joseph Andrews (ed. 2) II. iii. xii. 162 In his Heart he preferred the Pedestrian even to the Vehicular Expedition.
1786 Mrs. Johnson Francis (Dublin ed.) vii. 67 The vehicular accommodations which are provided at the inns on the road.
1816 W. Scott Antiquary III. vii. 154 It is the vehicular, not the equestrian exercise which he envies.
1847 L. Hunt Men, Women, & Bks. I. ii. 12 Coachmen and cabmen, and conductors, and horses, and all the exterior phenomena of things vehicular.
1871 E. Bulwer-Lytton Coming Race xiv They prefer their wings, for travel,..to vehicular conveyances.
1910 G. C. Eggleston Recoll. Varied Life ii. 3 The absence of bridges, the badness of roads, and the primitive character of vehicular devices..greatly emphasized overland distances.
1937 E. V. Mitchell Horse & Buggy Age xiv. 186 Vehicular travel over the old, rough, partly-improved roads was at a snail's pace.
1969 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 23 June 7/7 Vehicular traffic through school crossings.
2015 M. Sheppard Essent. Urban Design ii. vii. 249 Vehicular access for residents can be provided via rear lanes or car courts.
b. attributive. Law (originally and chiefly U.S.). Designating homicide, assault, etc., in which death or injury is a result of the criminally negligent operation of a motor vehicle by the driver. Esp. in vehicular homicide, vehicular manslaughter.
ΚΠ
1930 N.Y. Times 4 July 14/4 Police Commissioner Mulrooney announced yesterday that the vehicular homicide squad..has become so useful that he has determined to make it permanent.
1932 N.Y. Times 24 Apr. ix. 6/4 Frequently death and injury are due to the disregard of drivers for the safety of pedestrians. They are guilty of vehicular assault.
1935 N.Y. Amsterdam News 5 Oct. 20/5 [He] was in jail..serving a six months' term on a vehicular manslaughter charge.
2001 J. D. Delk in M. C. Desch Soldiers in Cities vi. 94 The other individual, a felon on probation..for vehicular manslaughter, was wounded.
2014 L. Jordan Lakeside Redempt. (2015) ii. 31 I was found guilty of vehicular homicide while driving under the influence.
2. Appearing in, or manifesting as, a particular material object, shape, or form; embodied. Cf. vehicle n. 2. Now rare.In later use only with reference to the use of the word by Tucker or Blake (see quots. a1774, ?1820).
ΘΚΠ
the world > existence and causation > existence > substantiality or concreteness > [adjective] > concrete > embodied
incorporate1398
incarnate?1533
incorporated1644
bodied1647
vehicular1652
embodied1665
vehiculateda1692
incarnated1872
1652 E. Sparke Scintillula Altaris 330 Instructive, Tutelar, Vehicular, Militant, Matrimonial Terrestrial and Aquatick Angels.
1656 S. Holland Don Zara i. v. 39 That every Grove, Grot, and Stream has its tutelar and vehicular Deity.
1708 H. Dodwell Script. Acct. Eternal Rewards or Punishments 16 The Vehicular Bodies of the Angels.
a1774 A. Tucker Light of Nature (1805) II. xxi. 47 We may gather that the rational soul is compleatly formed..before entrance into the human body, and that the fashion and lineaments it afterwards takes..are not necessary for its subsistence in the vehicular state.
?1820 W. Blake Jerusalem iii. Pl. 53 But Los, who is the Vehicular Form of strong Urthona Wept vehemently over Albion.
1842 S. Wilberforce Let. 2 Feb. in A. R. Ashwell Life S. Wilberforce (1880) I. vi. 213 They are like spirits in the separate state, or like Dean Tucker's ‘vehicular state’.
1951 Mod. Philol. 48 191/1 We are told [in Blake's Jerusalem] that ‘Urizen is the champion of Albion’, a suggestion that Urizen's current vehicular form is Wellington.
2000 B. Dolan Malthus, Med. & Morality 103 Tucker..developed a decidedly peculiar eschatology, replete with a notion of the ‘vehicular’ soul.
3. Functioning or serving as a means or medium by which something is conveyed or transmitted; employed or acting as a vehicle for something else; designating this function or purpose.Sometimes with humorous or metaphorical reference to vehicles as a form of transport; cf. sense 1a.
ΚΠ
1670 S. Gott Divine Hist. Genesis World vii. 172 The Rays of Light are Incolorous themselvs, becaus they are not Objective, but Vehicular.
1690 E. Warren Geologia (new ed.) ix. 196 The First Earth..would rather have turned end-ways in the Celestial Stream, and have stood for the most part in that direction; as best agreeing with its own Form, and the vehicular Current wherein it floated.
a1754 H. Fielding Jrnl. Voy. Lisbon (1755) Pref. p. xvii By making use of a vehicular story, to wheel in among them worse manners than their own.
?1793 Argal II. v. 75 The power of chusing in what part of my receptacle my essence should reside, or dividing and uniting it at pleasure, of exercising the intellectual faculty, whenever there was the least atom of my original vehicular machine.
1844 R. W. Emerson Ess. 2nd Ser. i. 38 All language is vehicular and transitive, and is good..for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead.
1889 A. A. Wright Lessons Boston Correspondence School New Test. Greek p. xiv Words..for the vehicular purpose of a divine proclamation.
1977 19th-cent. Fiction 32 33 The characters of The Woman in White..are the links in the narrative chain, reduced to the vehicular function which mid-Victorian criticism ascribed solely to ‘plot’.
2001 D. S. Kastan Shakespeare & Bk. iv. 117 Do texts exist independently of the medium in which they appear, its material forms accidental and merely vehicular?
4. Linguistics. Designating a language used for communication between people who do not share a native language.For an earlier use with reference to language, but in a more general sense, see quot. 1844 at sense 3.
ΚΠ
1949 Africa 19 266 One or other of the four Congo vehicular languages is used.
1974 Amer. Anthropologist 76 695/2 The Diola spoken [in the film] is the common vehicular dialect, Kasa, that is used throughout the area to the south of the Casamance River.
2008 T. Güldemann Quotative Indexes Afr. Langs. i. 16 Speech varieties that were shaped by contact with Asian or European languages, like creoles, pidgins, or vehicular and native varieties of colonial languages.
Derivatives
veˈhicularly adv. by means of or in the manner of a vehicle (in various senses); as regards vehicles.
ΘΚΠ
society > travel > means of travel > a conveyance > vehicle > [adverb]
vehicularly1823
1823 S. T. Coleridge Let. 10 June (1971) V. 278 I should exceedingly regret that you should have your name mentionable by Murray as the person, who had originated the proposal, tho' but vehicularly, of an unsold unselling Volume.
1827 Ant 25 Aug. 225 The equestrian or vehicularly transported throngs, which, in these days, came by land from Glasgow to this coast.
1921 Philos. Rev. 30 356 In his central idea sensations vehicularly establish an immediate perceptual contact between mind and physical object.
1965 N.Y. Times 10 Jan. xx. 19/1 Motorists heading for vacations in the Poconos this winter will find that their way has been eased both visually and vehicularly by two highways.
2009 D. Crombie Necessary as Blood xxxii. 375 I understand you've been vehicularly abandoned. The Super took the pool car.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2017; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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adj.?1624