Inaccurate, and those gas gauges that tell you how many miles you have left, at least on my Mazda 3, are extremely conservative. One mile left on my car means at least fifty miles. I’m sure how conservative they are varies by manufacturer.
I don’t see a problem with it. It just means that the car was running, and then the running stopped without it being shut off. It doesn’t even inherently mean you can’t start it again, hence why you sometimes hear “My car died and it wouldn’t start.”
Yeah, it’s misleading to say “my car died” when you mean “I forgot to put enough gas in my car,” but that’s not because it’s inaccurate. It’s because you are conveniently leaving out your culpability.
I also refer to my computer dying when the power just seems to cut out, without an actual crash.
Agreed. Spanish actually has a grammatical construction just for shifting the blame away from oneself – se me (verb in preterite 3rd person). “The car died” strikes me as very similar in tone. In both cases, it’s implied that the speaker isn’t sure how it happened, or is pretending to not be sure (occasionally this is used for humorous effect, rather than true deception).
I’d say “my car died”. Not because it was true, but because I’d rather claim mysterious engine problems than admit that I forgot to put gas in the car.
Well, except the gas of course.
But if I neglected my engine by (for example) letting the oil level get too low, and it finally seized, I would still say “my car died,” even though neglect was the root cause.
When an engine stops running withoug being switched off intentionally, it is said to have died. Even if it can be restarted immediately. “It has died” is not the same thing as “It is dead”, a whole other meaning. If a mechanic wants you to turn off the key, he will tell you to “kill the engine”. But you don’t “kill the car”. And the car has not died when the engine is temporarily shut off for any reason, intentional or otherwise. Tell your mechanic “The engine keeps dying”, and he will know exactly what you are talking about, and consider the possibility that it is failing to get gas.
It’s all about context
I wouldn’t declare the car dead unless the repairs needed were mechanical in nature and too costly to make economic sense. Out of gas or a flat, not dead. Out of gas because the gauge broke, the gauge died but the car did not: the car had one of those temporary ischemias. Car actually starts but looking at it makes people wonder how come the driver didn’t need to be hospitalized, car’s being sent to a better place as soon as the tow truck gets here.
My previous car still moved but the repairs needed by the dead AC, plus being at a point where it was about to need a new set of shoes plus… the reaction I usually get from people who ask how come I got a new car, once they start adding up numbers, is “oh my, it might as well have died!” It wasn’t mechanically dead, but it was economically dead.
The se is part of a reflexive verb, the structure only works with reflexive verbs.
I consider it inaccurate, since it’s not like a mechanical failure occurred.
Running out of gas, blowing a tire, or a drained battery are common enough that a person can suggest any of these as their problem (more accurately), as opposed to vaguely describing their car as dead.
When I hear the car has died (as opposed to the battery has died), I assume it’s a more mechanically severe problem than the above (if not preexisting), which probably can’t be fixed on the side of the road and/or without special tools.
There’s an expression in Japanese which says that “Even dogs won’t eat domestic disputes.” 婦の喧嘩は犬も食わない
Meaning that even dogs which would eat anything won’t touch a fight between husbands and wives.
That said, I’d never say that the car died if it ran out of gas.
If something else happened and the engine suddenly quit without knowing the cause, I would certainly say that the engine died. You can talk about a dead battery, but we never say a dead tire, although we can be dead tired.
Inaccurate. “My car died.” implies that the car is no longer functioning mechanically. Your car works, it’s just out of gas. It’s the same if your battery goes. You can say “My battery died.” or “I have a dead battery.”, but not “My car died.”, because your car is fine.
That’s pretty much along the lines of what I was thinking.
Basically, if you’re just describing it in everyday conversation, saying “it died” when it ran out of gas is not really accurate, but it’s not a big deal. But if you ran out of gas on the way to work and told your boss that your car “died” and that’s why you’ll be late, that’s misleading, as a car “dying” implies that something unexpected and unavoidable befell your car requiring extraordinary measures on your part to get going, and therefore is not your fault. Not paying attention to your gas gauge is none of those things- it’s just irresponsibility.
Musing upon this a bit more (at least the first word of my response to the OP), while I don’t use it for things like a car, the usual idiom for me and my friends and family when our phone runs out of batteries is “my phone died” or “my phone is dead,” even though, analogously, it’s the same type of situation as with the car–it’s the user who didn’t provide the device with enough charge/gas.
:smack:
It’s an idiom. Literal accuracy is irrelevant. Even asking about its literal correctness is missing the point. Any assertion it’s correct or incorrect falls solidly into the Paulian class of “not even wrong.”
Well, yes, of course it’s an idiom. We’re exploring how people use the idiom. None of the definitions in this thread are literal, given that a car is not a living being and cannot literally “die.” The question is, idiomatically, can you/do you refer to a car running out of gas as having “died” or is that restricted to other causes of the car no longer functioning (e.g. causes outside your control.)
True. The “me” is the most important part – it would be a dative if it were Latin – basically, an indirect object. In English, we can say “…on me” for this: The car just up and died on me! Who woulda thunk it!.