I found the following sentence in the Sunday (London) Times: “Shell has installed battery charging points on 10 of its 1000 forecourts around Britain.” It looks like it should mean filling station, but when I googled it, the only auto related meaning seemed to be car dealers doing their own financing of purchases, which makes no sense in this context. I also don’t think Shell is installing charging stations on tennis courts.
It means the area in front of the entrance to a building.
A forecourt is just an open area in front of a building. For filling stations in the UK, it refers more directly to the area with the pumps and not any attached convenience store or other related structures.
From the OED: “The court or enclosed space in front of a building, the first or outer court. spec. the petrol-dispensing part of a filling-station”
I think it might refer the the area in front of some sort of building.
At least, that’s what somebody told me.
In the UK
“Forecourt” is almost universally used to mean the area of a petrol (gas) station where the pumps are.
Usage would be “Garage forecourt” or “Petrol station forecourt”
It would include the payment area, which may also be a shop.
So I take it there’s no one word for this in American English?
Well, no, unless there’s card payment machines attached to the pumps, the shop/checkout is behind the forecourt, not on/in it.
“Forecourt” is a synecdoche for the whole petrol retailing environment, so any discussion of the forecourt sector would include Wild Bean Cafes and the like.
I don’t know why we have it in British English. I’ve always found it an irritating, pretentious word that could invariably be replaced by ‘petrol station’ or ‘filling station’. If it was used specifically for the area where the pumps are there might be some tenuous need for it, but it isn’t, it generally refers to the whole location and enterprise.
I’m sure that it is used in the more specific sense, at least by people who work at gas stations. One of my favourite sitcoms, Næturvaktin, is set in Reykjavík gas station, and the characters do regularly refer to specific areas of it, including the “forecourt” (in the English subtitles, anyway). In fact, that that word is part of one of the famous catchphrases of the main character—he always uses his walkie-talkie to page the “starfsmaður á plani” (“staff on the forecourt”) for what turns out to be some frivolous task.
Sure, but when it’s used in the wider sense it irritates me, in the same way as the word ‘fleet’ does when people talk about the UK’s ‘fleet’ of cars like they’re all bobbing up and down while at anchor.
Sorry, I don’t agree with your interpretation. When did you last say ‘I’m just popping down to the petrol forecourt to fill up the car’. Never. You say ‘petrol station’.
The forecourt is the bit with the pumps where you park your car.
My point is precisely that - no one in normal usage ever refers to a petrol station as a ‘forecourt’. Yet, as the quote in the OP shows, petrol companies and related industries always refer to the whole complex as a ‘forecourt’. Another random example would be the ‘Our forecourts’ page of the Essar Oil UK website - there are plenty others.
Forecourt is one word rather than two, and focussed on where the core business goes on: on both counts handier for people writing about it
Yet the US economy has so far survived not having the word!
I’ve aways considered one of the joys of the English language is that we have more words than strictly necessary to function, not less. English isn’t about efficiency, it’s about nuance. Poets love it.
Of course. But then good poetry wouldn’t have its power if there weren’t also irritating words, usages and metaphors.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me. ‘Fleet’ can be the collective noun for any mechanical mode of transport: Cars, lorries, trains, tanks, and yes, even boats. What collective noun would you use for cars etc?
Ok, I’m sorry for this pointless hi-jack, but it’s possible for it to be both reasonable and subjectively irritating. As it happens I think most people go through their entire lives without ever using a collective noun for cars. In my experience, ‘fleet’ is only every used to refer to cars by the sort of people who happily use all sorts of other management bullshit. None of them ever has the elan of a sailor or a pilot, people who work with actual fleets.