When I was a kid most of us called a full-sized motorcycle a “motor.” Later on the universal term was “bike.” Whenever we used the full name, as often as not it was pronounced “motor sickle” (spinoff of bicycle, would be my guess for why) as opposed to “motor cycle.”
In this poll please pick the version (or supply one after voting “other”) that was most common to you and/or your peers.
Discussion welcomed!
“bike”, “ride”, “chopper”, “Harley”, “rice rocket” (although the last three refer to a specific style or brand of motorcycle)
I should definitely have included “ride.”
When I am teasing my wife about her accent, I call it a “motey seekle.”
Bike was most common. Next was motorbike or motorcycle. I’ve heard it pronounced motor-sickle but not very often. We never called it a motor or a cycle, and to us a scooter was something like a Vespa (which most of us did not consider to be a “real” bike).
For specific types of bikes we called them dirt bike, chopper,. road hog (or just hog), low rider, mini bike, and trike. I don’t remember hearing rice rocket in the 70s. We didn’t start using that until the 80s along with variants like rice burner and crotch rocket.
I don’t remember references to rice until well into the 80’s. Previous to that they were mostly called “Jap bikes” or similar.
I don’t want a pickle…
“scooter”. That would be funny. A couple of my co-workers ride Harleys. I’ll try calling it a scooter some time, and see what reaction I get.
I chose “other”, as I almost exclusively refer to them as “those noisy motherfuckers” or something similar.
Donorcycles.
Beautiful! Thread-winner!
Bike, scoot.
Not scooter…that is a particular type of bike.
When my scooter grows up, it wants to be a real Harley.
Can’t you train it to want something worth being?
Continental Europeans generally call a motorbike a “Moto” (as opposed to a “motoR”)
This was fun for us Brits riding abroad for the first time just after a major advertising campaign for Motorola mobile phones for which the strapline was “Hello Moto”. It took a while of turning up at French campsites to be asked “Moto?” and replying, “No, Nokia” to puzzled looks before we settled into it!
I only call it a motorcycle, and when people around me call it a “bike” I have to determine from the context if they mean bicycle or not. That’s why I call it a motorcycle.