So (beyond providing material for George Carlin), why is it normal to say "get on an airplane/subway/train", and "get in a car"?

IMO, the first examples have to do with the trip. The car however is just talking about getting into the physical vehicle.

My best guess is that you can walk onto most airplanes/subways/trains, and have to lift your legs to get into a car.

I don't know that anyone has defined the idiosyncrasies of prepositions. It's probably just idiomatic, developing that way because that's the way that became popular.

On a related note, you'll find that non-native speakers of a language almost always have the hardest time with prepositions, because each language's prepositional usages seem to be different from every other language's. I don't don't think that there really is any rhyme or reason.

I like Matt's reasoning. It's sound and believable.

A horse and carriage may be an interesting way to look at this, you would get on the horse but get in the carriage. Now a car is most defiantly some kind of motorised carriage so you get in that, but you could see a airplane/subway/train as the horse ie something you ride the back of.

However I think the leg lifting explanation holds more water

Cheers

Cris.

In the Car, On the Bus

Not really much more information, but a somewhat scholarly source who also has no idea.

I also wouldn't be surprised if it were a result of the source language of the noun involved.

I once got on a car, but I fell off when it started moving.
Car: From the Celtic
Bus (Omnibus): From the Latin
Airplane (Aeroplane): French/Greek
Train: Middle English derived from old French

So, obviously, people of Celtic origin get in things, the rest of us get on them!

So all methods of public transportation you "get on", private transportation you "get in". Or it may simply be because cars were used first in the U.S. (on a widespread level) and the other forms of transportation were more used in England at first. The Americans took the British vernacular when it applied to buses/trains/planes, and the British took the American vernacular when it applied to cars.

If that is true then why does just about every term related to cars differ between the two countries ?

auto-mobile/vehicle vs car
gas vs petrol
gas pedal vs accelerator
windshield vs windscreen
trunk vs boot
parking brake vs hand brake

etc, etc

I don't think it has to do with public versus private transportation at all. A private citizen can own a own a bus or a plane, and I don't that would change how you would talk about it.

So do you get in a Cessna, or on a Cessna?

You definitely get in a Cessna. You get on a Lear. Maybe it's related to the staircase involved?

Probably "in." But in my initial post I did qualify with the word "most." Very small planes were one of the exceptions I considered, but decided to make the post short and sweet.

I think most trains, planes, and buses are seen more like moving platforms. You get on a platform.

"On" or "In" an elevator?

I think modern usage has forwarded the use of 'get', replacing other words that would normally be used.

Example-
Walk onto the bus
Climb into the car

It seems to me that anywhere you can walk the preposition of favor is 'on'.

(and then someone says 'walk into a theater' and my house of cards falls)

Ooo! Good one.

Personally, I'd say "I'm getting on an elevator" and "I'm currently in an elevator."

auto-mobile/vehicle vs car - All three terms are used in the US and Canada from my experience.

gas vs petrol - "gas" is colloquial IMO, and simply an abbreviation for "gasoline" - but yes, no one uses "petrol" here unless they're a british ex-pat.

gas pedal vs accelerator - both are used. accelerator is more "correct." Some people in the US however don't know the difference between the accelerator and the brake (example: Audi and Toyota "sudden acceleration" scares)

parking brake vs hand brake - both/either are used commonly. As well as "emergency brake," which in many cars, is what it actually is. Some cars have a (locking) foot-operated brake device that is a "parking brake."

Yes, but the US terms are almost never used over here. You would just about never refer to a car as a auto-mobile or a vehicle, you'd always say car.

If we borrowed our car related terms from the US, you'd expect that we would regularly use all the variations. Given that we pretty much just use the single word for each thing in the UK, it seems more likely that those variants were ones that started here.

BTW, I don't currently know anyone who doesn't exclusively use the word "car" to describe or refer to, well, a car.

You are missing my point

No one in the UK (ok, not quite but very nearly) would ever use the word automobile to refer to a car or things related to a car. For example the UK press would never refer to the industry related to personal motor vehicles as "the automobile industry", it would always be "the car industry". Whereas a quick Google suggest that the US press uses the terms interchangeably.

Automobile appears to be a very much US centric term (when compared to other English speaking lands) and I still reckon if as proposed we in the UK had taken our lead on car terms from the US that most of the various terms that are/have been used in the US would also have been common here.

"Motor" is quite widely used instead of car, though perhaps mainly by mockneys or ironic mockneys. (No, that's not a band.)

Is it still colloquial in the US to "ride" in a car, or on a train, or just "ride" a train or subway? What about Canada? In the UK you "ride" a bike or horse, but never anything you actually get inside. You don't even get a "ride with" someone in a car, you get a "lift" with them.

Peter

My Grandad always used to say "motor car".

Although of course the names of the Royal Automobile Club and the Automobile Association somewhat weaken my argument that we have never used automobile in the UK...

Phoebus was driving a fiery car as long ago as the Faerie Queene. Automobile, says Wikipedia, is French. It's more reasonable to imagine that all these terms -- and perhaps others, such as horseless chariot -- were current simultaneously at the very beginning of the motoring era, and that, through the positive feedback loop of popular currency, different ones crystallised into ubiquity in different dialectic zones (the US and the UK not then forming a single dialectic zone to the extent that they do today).

Peter

Umm, didn't a nice magazine I had many many years ago, Automobile, come out of the UK?

it's interesting to note that while automobile, vehicle, and car each are used in the US to designate (for most intents and purposes) the same means of conveyance, their use is not exactly interchangeable.

Car is very much the casual, standard term ("I bought a car").
Automobile is a more esoteric descriptor hearkening back to the roots of the era (The Automobile Industry, Automobile Insurance company).
Vehicle is used often in 'precision language' (official descriptions of incidents, or directions given by authority figures).

Auto is also used regularly, but typically as an adjective- a shortening of Automobile (Auto Parts, Auto Service)

/observations of a layman

I would catch a lift with someone to the corner, then ride the subway down to the train station, then ride in take the train to another city. I might also ride on a bus at some point during the journey.

Cheers

I would say that "ride" implies (though does not dictate) passivity, in the sense that if you're riding in a car, someone else is driving. (Which is pretty much always the case with a train.)

A notable counterexample is in Chuck Berry's "No Particular Place to Go": "riding along in my automobile". (Then again his "baby" was "beside [him] at the wheel", so maybe she was driving.)

But, yes, it is common usage. Generally it implies that you were a passenger, unless you refer to the car self-possessively. "I rode here in a car" or "I rode here in Bob's car" both imply that you were a passenger, though the latter is somewhat awkward. (You'd be more likely to say "Bob drove me here" unless someone else was driving his car.) "I rode here in my car" implies that you probably drove.

+"I rode with Bob"