Oldsmobile

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A discontinued American car make that was once produced by General Motors and sold under a well-known brand name
2. The name of a defunct United States automobile manufacturer, formerly part of General Motors, that ceased production in 2004
3. An old American automotive marque from the General Motors family, known for its cars until the brand was retired

Etymology: Ransom E. Olds founded his first motor company in 1897, and his early firms carried his surname, so the cars were first sold simply as "Olds" automobiles. Customers and the press soon began running the two halves together, and the blend "Oldsmobile" caught on so widely that the company adopted it for itself. The name was a nickname that became a brand. The word is a compound of "Olds" and "mobile," the second element a clipped form of "automobile," which is itself a French-derived coinage from the early motoring era. Only the surname comes from a person; the "-mobile" ending was the fashionable suffix of the period, seen in many car and carriage names of the time. In poker slang, the word has a separate life. Players used it as a nickname for the Oldsmobile 98, the car's large flagship model, and the term acquired its card-table senses from that usage.