motorcycle

See also: motor cycle and motor-cycle

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From motor +‎ cycle, from the Motorcyclette produced in 1897 by the French Werner Frères et Cie.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈməʊtəˌsaɪkəl/
  • Audio (Southern England):(file)
  • (General American) IPA(key): /ˈmoʊtɚˌsaɪkəl/, [ˈmoʊɾɚˌsaɪkl̩]
  • (dated) IPA(key): /ˈmoʊtɚsɪk(ə)l/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Hyphenation: mo‧tor‧cy‧cle

Noun

motorcycle (plural motorcycles)

  2. An open-seated motor vehicle with handlebars instead of a steering wheel, and having two (or sometimes three) wheels.
    • 1995 October, Steven Puchalski, “Can these sci-fi videos show us the Woman of the Future?”, in Sci Fi Entertainment, page 36:
      Her big mission is to recover the precious Blue Star (a glowing rock in a box), which leads to a Western shoot-out, a space-age motorcycle gang, and an unamusing Darth Vader-esque villain.
    • 2009 February 15, Judith Martin, “It Started in Naples”, in The New York Times‎[1], archived from the original on 16 June 2022:
      That last problem did intrude on Hazzard’s roamings, and when she refers to the living city it is with periodic references to thefts of cars and wallets, with a warning not to carry anything “snatchable” by the thieves on motorcycles who whiz through the streets. Her husband, Francis Steegmuller, the critic, translator and biographer who died in 1994, had a bag snatched, and while he lost only a guidebook, he was badly injured as he held on to it and was dragged behind the attacking motorcycle.
    • 2021, Rivers Solomon, Sorrowland, #Merky Books, page 43:
      Vern rubbed her hands along the motorcycles, admiring their size and power, their silver and black sleekness.
    • 2025 October 7, Jason Zinoman, “What Clowns! (That’s a Compliment)”, in The New York Times‎[2], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 7 October 2025:
      Her breakout was the 2017 production “Nate” (available as a Netflix special) in which she played a toxic, handsy bro who drove a motorcycle onstage, guzzling beers, groping audience members and creating chaos.

Synonyms

Coordinate terms

  • bicycle, bike, e-bike (differentiated by societal convention even when having two or three wheels and a motor)

Derived terms

Descendants

Translations

See also

Verb

motorcycle (third-person singular simple present motorcycles, present participle motorcycling, simple past and past participle motorcycled)

  1. (intransitive) To ride a motorcycle.

Translations

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