What would you call a see-through panel designed to keep the wind (and more) from your face as you drive? The question was answered almost simultaneously on either side of the Atlantic – the Brits deciding you were being screened from the wind, Americans decided you were being shielded from it. Which one is the most correct is a question that can’t really be answered.

The German word Windschutzscheibe literally means wind protecting pane, and the French pare-brise means wind-bumper – so everyone was along the same lines. The wind was clearly an issue in those days.

The rocker panel, or sill, is the part of the car traditionally running between the wheel-arches beneath the doors.

The etymology of the term ‘rocker panel’ is filled with theories, ranging from it being a colloquial term used when the panels were highly-chromed in the early days of rock music, to 4×4 enthusiasts deciding that when perched upon a particularly large obstacle which ‘beached’ the car, you could ‘rock’ it by pivoting your very strong ‘rocker panel’ on the obstacle to get a wheel to touch the ground and hopefully pull (or push) you out of danger.

The most convincing we’ve seen is actually from an excerpt of an 1881 James W. Burgess book on carriage design and explains it as an aesthetically pleasing facade covering an unsightly extra-deep floor (to give the passengers enough room) that, if left uncovered, would make the carriage proportions appear unbalanced. The design of this facade was based on rocking chairs, rocking horses etc, balancing the sense of depth to the naked eye with the real depth hidden by black paint beyond it. This kind of panel was apparently commonplace on carriages, and as the design of these was the basis for the early cars, the rocker panel remained a feature. As car design evolved, that part of the car did too – and the name had stuck by then.

The Brits, however, simply call this part of the car the ‘sill’. Sills are usually the flat part of the bottom of a frame for an object – think windowsill – a strong and settled foundation from which the object can be built. The same goes for the early cars. From a solid sill between the wheels the body of the vehicle can then be built. The old word syll is found in many similar forms in old English, Norse, Germanic and many more ancient and medieval languages, all tending to mean a solid foundation.

Where the fuel is stored is clearly a ‘tank’ of some kind, the British and American names agree – but what of the name of the fuel itself? Gas and Petrol… the same, or different?

In both Britain and America, the idea of stepping on the gas, giving it some gas, or a gas pedal (even though the Brits may often call it the ‘accelerator’, or ‘throttle’ instead) is universally recognised. So why do the terms for the fuel differ?

Firstly – gasoline and petroleum are the same thing* – and in well over 99% of occasions you’re likely to encounter it, it won’t be a gas. As anyone who has refuelled a vehicle knows, the tank is filled with liquid.

Looking at the British term petroleum, or petrol, the root of this is quite clear, with the latin words for rock and oil being petra and oleum. The word petroleum, then, has been around for much longer than the first cars, indeed it can be traced in that form to 14th century France, and so shortening this to simply ‘petrol’ meant a modern name for an ancient product.

So why do Americans call this ancient rock-oil ‘gasoline’? Petroleum as a word was around in Europe back when the North American mainland was being filled with enthusiastic European settlers and so it’s likely those first English-speakers were aware of the term, but it’s only when this ‘rock oil’ was started to be split into different compounds did the term ‘gasoline’ come about. In a lot of organic chemistry, -ene or -ine is used (think benzene/benzine), and so the part of the petroleum distilled-off and used in motor vehicles was the part of highest volatility, and in time was dubbed gasoline. Until recently it was thought the ‘gas’ part of it was due to it’s nature of being quite gas-like, however, it may have actually come from a brand name of Cazeline (a product sold and imported into the UK by a Mr John Cassell, and so named after him – Cassel + ine), which, when made by others who were not allowed to use the brand name, began being sold as Gazeline – or, in time, ‘gasoline’.

*For emissions reasons the stuff you get in the US is different from Britain, with generally higher octane ratings allowed in Europe, but the two are essentially the same product.

The part of the car used to hold items you won’t need access to without stopping the vehicle is called the boot in the UK, and the trunk in the US. These words may be different, but their meaning is incredibly similar when taken back to their origins.

In Britain during the time before cars and subsequently on early car designs a coachman, charged with driving the vehicle – whether that be the horse pulling a carriage or perhaps an automobile, would need to take some items with him (for it would inevitably be a man in those days), and would generally sit or stand on a locker containing his boots – much-needed sturdy footwear to change into for the inevitable repairs to the carriage or automobile whilst on appalling early roads built mainly for hooves rather than wheels. Keeping these boots and other things in the receptacle mean it was named the boot locker – and, in time, simply the boot. As time went on and coachmen were not needed, the boot was still very handy and a crucial part of a desirable carriage design.

On the other side of the Atlantic something similar was happening, it’s just that in the early days the item was carrying more than just boots, so tended to be an actual trunk attached to the car – usually at the back so as not to block the view ahead. In time, much like the ‘boot’, the ‘trunk’ became part of the car itself rather than a tacked-on afterthought. And the name stuck.

The part of the car covering the wheel has two very different names depending on whether you’re coming from a British viewpoint or an American one.

Although nowadays the fender/wing covering the wheel is very much part of the overall car body, in the early days of car design the wheels were more remote from the chassis, and so to stop all manner of grubby bits flicking up at high speed from the wheels into other road users (and all over your own gleaming coachwork) there needed to be some kind of extra guard.

To the British designers of the day these extra panels sticking out from the main body – with sweeping, flowing curves – resembled the wings of birds, and so the name was given. Over the years the name has stuck to some extent, but with the wheels of modern cars becoming ever more integrated into the overall form of the car the idea of a ‘wing’ seems a bit vague, and so these are often now simply called ‘arches’ or ‘panels’ (or ‘bumpers’ if they’re at the points likely to make contact with other vehicles, like the front and back). Indeed the term ‘wing’ to a British youngster would usually conjure up images of a spoiler attached to the back of a car.

In the US these wheel-covers were given a name which reflected their purpose rather than the way they looked, and so the piece of metal which guards the detritus flying up from the road was called the ‘fender’ – literally fending off the attack of the muddy roads. As time went on this function still applied, and therefore so did the name. In the States, a small incident that might be called a ‘bump’ by a Brit where the bumper makes contact with something, would often be called a ‘fender bender’.