I found saloon used in The Reluctant Colonel with this meaning. I didn’t think about it much, other than, that’s weird. After finishing the book, I looked it up. Saloon can mean sedan (normal car) in the UK.
I just ran across this again, this time in Artemis Fowl.
Upon reading this second occurrence, I searched for the etymology of this word. (I don’t own an OED.) While I did find a few etymologies of saloon, none of them mentioned this definition.
So now I’m hoping. Can you help me, please? Tell me, how did this happen?
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September 9, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Dawn Goldberg
All you had to do was ask.
It’s not everyone who has the full OED upstairs. (Of course, because my OED is upstairs, it took me these many days to go upstairs and get the volume I needed and bring it downstairs to my computer. Go figure.)
The 4th definition for “saloon” is “a large cabin in a passenger-boat for the common use of passengers in general or for those paying first-class fares; passenger cabin for an aeroplane.” 4b definition is “a railway carriage without compartments, furnished more or less luxuriously as a drawing-room or for a specific purpose.” 4c definition is “a type of motor car with a closed body for four or more passengers.”
1st noted use of “saloon” in the 4c definition: Motor manual from 1908 (“Other forms of bodies fitted to more expensive cars include the brougham, landaulet, saloon, double phaeton, etc.”) Another use from 1927 (B.K. Seymour in Three Wives: “He … secured the services of a Buick saloon.”
How’s that?
September 9, 2008 at 7:40 pm
wordlily
Thanks, Dawn! It still doesn’t make sense to me, though. I’d found the definition, I just wonder how that came to be.
May 21, 2009 at 9:40 am
david d
Don’t know about the OED, but as fars as English goes it maty be derived from the rhyming slang Saloon Bar = Car. Drooping the bar we have Saloon.