It goes all the way back to when horse-drawn carriages were the norm. The driver would sit on a chest that held his belongings, including – yes – his boots. The original name was "the boot locker", which in time became shortened to just "the boot."
Because in the days of carriages, the drivers had a storage compartment they sat on. Sometimes, it was used for the passengers' valuables, but what it really was, was a boot locker. So they just kept calling vehicular storage the "boot locker," or "boot" for short.
What is the difference between a trunk and a boot?
The storage space located at the rear of the Car is termed as "Car trunk" or "Car boot". Though both terms mean the same, they are called differently in different regions. In the United States, it is called a "Car Trunk", whereas in British English, it is called a "Car Boot".
Why do Australians call the trunk of a car a boot?
The usage of the word "trunk" comes from it being the word for a large travelling chest, as such trunks were often attached to the back of the vehicle before the development of integrated storage compartments in the 1930s; while the usage of the word "boot" comes from the word for a built-in compartment on a horse- ...
The term windshield is used generally throughout the US and Canada. The term windscreen is the usual term in the British Isles and Australasia for all vehicles.
Much like how Merriam-Webster describes a bonnet as a cloth or straw hat worn by women or children, the Brits call the car's hood a bonnet as a reference to exquisite headwear worn by women during the early days of the automobile.
This is just the basic difference of different words meaning the same thing depending on whether you're using American English or British English. In British English, the storage space in a car is called the car boot while in American English it is called the car trunk.
Trunk. vs. The part of the car used to hold items you won't need access to without stopping the vehicle is called the boot in the UK, and the trunk in the US. These words may be different, but their meaning is incredibly similar when taken back to their origins.
The term Wellington boot comes from Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, who instructed his shoemaker to create the boot by modifying the design of the Hessian boot. The terms gumboot and rubber boot are both derived from the rubber modern Wellington boots are made from, with the term "gum" coming from gum rubber.
kerb in a nutshell. Curb and kerb are two spellings of a term that denotes the same physical feature: the edged boundary between a road and a sidewalk. The primary difference lies in their regional use, with curb being the standard in American English and kerb in British English.
If you're in the U.S., you're probably calling it a "turn signal" or "blinker." But in the U.K., that turn signal becomes an "indicator." Similar to how car hoods are called "bonnets" in England, the turn signal switch in both countries is the same car part with the same function, but a completely different name.
It goes all the way back to when horse-drawn carriages were the norm. The driver would sit on a chest that held his belongings, including – yes – his boots. The original name was "the boot locker", which in time became shortened to just "the boot."
As these boots spread to other English-speaking countries—such as Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa—local language influenced the terminology. In regions that commonly used the word “gum” to describe rubber products, the name “gumboots” naturally took hold.
In British slang, the terms rust bucket or simply bucket, and shed are used to refer to decrepit cars but the favoured term is old banger, often shortened to banger.
Interestingly, although "car" is used for an automobile in most of England, in London it's often referred to as a "motor". Which brings us on to the subject of language and the fact that you might also hear a car being called a "jam jar" in some parts of London, an example of Cockney rhyming slang ( car = jam jar).
In British English, the terms "4x4" (pronounced "four-by-four"), "jeep", four wheel drive, or "off-road vehicle" are generally used instead of "sport utility vehicle".
