Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origins 64. The weird origin today is clunker.
Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. A clunker is a very old and poorly
maintained piece of machinery, especially a car. By extension so you know , even
though we mostly use it for cars but sometimes by extension we can use it for
other things. By extension it could also be used for anything that is not
successful. Okay. Let's continue. The origin is believed to come from the
sounds some old machinery may make when in use. The word clunk by itself is the
sound made by one heavy object hitting something else. So you know, with a car,
especially if it's driving down the road, you might hear clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk,
clunk. So that's where the word ...this was the origin really came from that they
referred to this old car that's not maintained well. As a clunker. Okay, Let's
continue. The term seemed to appear in the late 1930s and 1940s which was
towards the end of the Depression and wartime. Money was tight and many
people probably did not have much money to maintain one's car properly. If they
could afford a car or if they could afford one at all. Okay. Let's continue.
Other words used for an old car in poor condition are jalopy. Yeah. They used
jalopy, lemon. Lemon well lemon doesn't always have to be very old. It
just means that a car that breaks down a lot. But usually that is an old car. A
beater you know, it's beating along. Rattletrap.
Yeah. It could like the car shaking around like different parts of the car
shaking a lot. It's like rattling, a rattling noise. So kind of a similar idea.
Rust bucket. Okay. Yeah. When the car is really old especially if it's in
northern part of the country, a lot of the metal on the you know,
outside surface of the car may start to rust. So sometimes they could be called a
rust bucket too. Okay , good. Anyway here are several examples. Example
number one. When he picked me up for a date. I couldn't believe he was driving a
clunker. Yeah so there's always some jokes about this. Where you know, some
girl maybe she doesn't want to get in the car if the car is too terrible
looking. All right. Number two. When are you going to bring that clunker to the
junkyard and get a new car . Yeah. Maybe some coworkers are teasing him. Or number
three. During the Obama administration, he tried to stimulate the car industry by
having a program called 'cash for clunkers' It was supposed to help, indirectly
help the environment too, I think as you know getting rid of older cars that had
poor gas mileage and buying newer cars that had better gas mileage. I don't know
how well but it was questionable how well it really worked out. But that was
the idea behind it but he kind of really brought back the word clunker again
everybody was used to the word clunker during that time. Let's continue. Okay and
here's the one use where we're not really talking about either a car or
machine. You could say that movie turned out to be a real clunker. Clunker because
remember I said here you know by extension it could be used for other
things that's not successful as well. Anyway, I hope you got it. I hope it was clear. I hope
it was informative. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.