On Thu, 21 Apr 2011, Peter Fox wrote:

Mark Robinson wrote:
On 21/04/2011 09:33, Graeme Wall wrote:

Pedantically they have motors, not engines. The latter being those nasty
infernal combustion thingies. Motors run on nice clean electrickery.

Doubly pedantically, a motor *is* an engine (an engine isn't always
a motor, though, cf siege engine, difference engine, database engine...)

No.
The use of "engine" for electric motor is unheard of.

It is undoubtedly incorrect in rail use. I would agree it's uncommon in
general use. But it is simply absurd to suggest that it is unheard of in
general use. The article that sparked this thread is one quite clear
example of that use. There is a use of "electric engine" in the British
National Corpus:

The electric engine is extremely efficient at converting electrical
energy into movement, far more efficient than petrol, diesel or steam
engines. -- New Scientist. London: IPC Magazines Ltd, 1991, pp. ??.

It's an elementary matter to find more uses like this with the aid of your
preferred search engine.

tom

--
Eight-bit is forever