Why are fire engines so called?
Question
Why are fire engines so called? Why not a truck or a lorry?
Jeremy, Wimbledon
Answer
** Definitive **
Name: Tim, Wimbledon
Qualification: Common sense
Answer: Early fire engines were not motor vehicles, but were steam-powered. Hence the phrase fire engine. I suspect the Americans just want to be different and called them firetrucks.
** Additional Definitive **
Name: Jim, St Albans
Qualification: My friend got arrested… long story!
Answer: On his way up to the Orkneys for a festival, my friend was arrested for sleeping in a dockyard. Because he was planning to live off the land, he was carrying some snares and the police defined these as “poaching engines”. Therefore, the word engine is an old word for a mechanical device. Battering rams were called “engines of war”. So a fire engine was so called, as it was a mechanical device. The first ones wouldn’t even have had an engine, they would have been dragged by horses.