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What is the difference between "motor transport" and "motorized transport". The dictionaries do not contain these collocations and relevant explanations.

Are they interchangeable? As I understand, motorized transport and motor transport mean the vehicles fitted with an engine.

user128024
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  • Motor transport simply refers to transport by something that contains a motor. Strictly-speaking, motorized* transport* also includes the idea that the conveyance has undergone some process resulting in it having a motor. (Consider other -ized words like up-sized, pulverized, etc - they carry the sense of something having undergone a process.) However, in common usage, your two phrases are equivalent. – Lawrence Aug 08 '16 at 10:40

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It might help to understand the grammatical terminology behind the two alternatives.

In motorized transport, motorized obviously is an adjective modifying the noun transport. In motor transport, motor is called a noun adjunct or attributive noun, much like in chicken soup or football player and is used in the same way as adjectives are.

While there are no common alternatives using adjectives instead of attributive nouns in compounds like football player there often is more than one way of expressing something. On its entry to attributive noun wikipedia gives the example that both erythrocyte maturation (attributive noun) and erythrocytic maturation (adjective) are common and valid terms for the same process. Thus, the availability of a valid adjective does not necesarrily need to keep you from using an attributive noun in its place.

That said, I would consider both alternatives, motor transport and motorized transport as equally valid synonyms.

inVader
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  • I think it's true that they're both valid, and I completely agree with your analysis, but I think it's worth pointing out that "motorized transport" sounds quite archaic, and I think the reason is that it begs the question "compared to what?". IE, what unmotorized transport might we be talking about? Bicycles and walking don't seem appropriate - it sounds more like the things that were superseded by motorized transport, namely horses and horse-driven coaches. "Motor transport" seems like a more simple term as it doesn't sound like an alternative to something last seen in bulk 100 years ago. – Max Williams Aug 08 '16 at 09:36
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I completely agree, both motor transport and motorized transport are regarded as identical synonyms. These are regarded so by Google and various other search engines.

aaclean
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