Hupmobile

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A make of automobile once produced in the United States by the Hupp Motor Car Company during the early twentieth century
2. The name of a historic American car brand built by the Hupp Motor Car Company in the early 1900s
3. An early twentieth-century motor vehicle marque sold in America and manufactured by the Hupp Motor Car Company of Detroit

Etymology: Hupmobile was not a coinage from classical roots but a brand name, and it is simply a surname with a suffix attached. In 1908 Robert C. Hupp founded a Detroit automaker, the Hupp Motor Car Company, and its first car, introduced in 1909, carried the family name joined to "-mobile." That ending had become fashionable after "automobile" took hold in the 1890s, and it was the same pattern used for Oldsmobile, which combined the name of Ransom Olds with the suffix. The root of "-mobile" is the Latin "mobilis," meaning "movable," which also gives English "mobile," "mobility," and "mobilize." So the name reads roughly as "Hupp's movable vehicle." The company built cars for about three decades, and the brand was discontinued in 1940.