motor car
"motor-car" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“motor car” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Alternative form of motorcar (“self-propelled railway vehicle”).
Corpus desk
Index EN-motor-car · motor car · English
motor car · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "M" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | motor car |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “motor car” in English
Rare enough to double-check
motor car is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for motor car in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is motor car, spelled M-O-T-O-R- -C-A-R.
Definition
- 1Alternative form of motorcar (“self-propelled railway vehicle”).
- 2Alternative form of motorcar (“automobile”).
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how motor car appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The 20 sets of B.W. [British Westinghouse] equipment, including motor bogies and traction motors, were refitted to 20 new motor cars, similar in design to the 1913 stock, again at the railway company's Neasden Works.
A motor car is provided with two self-ventilated series-wound G.E.C. traction motors, each having a continuous rating of 80 h.p. at 575 V. 116 A. at a field strength of 66 per cent.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.