a. Also 7 -are. [ad. late L. vehiculār-is, f. vehicul-um VEHICLE sb.]
1. Of or pertaining to, associated or connected with, a (wheeled) vehicle.
1616. Chapman, Homer’s Hymn Venus. Charriots and all the frames vehiculare.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Vehicular, pertaining to any instrument or engine of carriage.
1754. Fielding, Voy. Lisbon, Wks. 1882, VII. 12. By making use of a vehicular story, to wheel in among them worse manners than their own.
1818. Scott, Hrt. Midl., i. The Insides and Outsides, to use the appropriate vehicular phrases.
1847. L. Hunt, Men, Women, & B., I. ii. 12. Coachmen and cabmen, and conductors, and horses, and all the exterior phenomena of things vehicular.
1860. G. Meredith, Evan Harrington, x. I heard your welcome vehicular music.
fig. 1885. Cent. Mag., XXIX. 510. The poet’s walk, talk, bearing, and intellect, are illustrated by a series of images, and in a style so vehicular as to deserve unusual praise.
b. Made, performed or carried on, by means of a vehicle or vehicles.
1742. Fielding, J. Andrews, III. xii. In his heart he preferred the pedestrian even to the vehicular expedition.
1816. Scott, Antiq., xxxvi. It is the vehicular, not the equestrian exercise, which he envies.
1854. Lowell, Jrnl. Italy, Prose Wks. 1890, I. 130. I am quite sure that he believes … the Pre-Adamites were … incapable of any but vehicular progression.
1879. Daily News, 26 Dec., 5/2. Vehicular traffic was almost entirely suspended.
c. Of the nature of, serving as, a vehicle.
1807. Byron, Lett. to Miss Pigot, Aug. Places inaccessible to vehicular conveyances.
1844. Emerson, Ess., Poet, ¶ 27. All language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead.
1871. Lytton, Coming Race, xiv. They prefer their wings, for travel,… to vehicular conveyances.
† 2. Invested with a vehicle or special form; embodied. Obs.
1656. S. Holland, Zara (1719), 29. That every Grove, Grot and Stream has its tutelar and vehicular Deity.
a. 1774. Tucker, Lt. Nat., II. xxi. 47. We may gather that the rational soul is compleatly formed … before entrance into the human body, and that the fashion and lineaments it afterwards takes … are not necessary for its subsistence in the vehicular state. Ibid., xxvi. 140. To behold the wonders of the vehicular state, and boundless glories of the mundane soul.
Hence Vehicularly adv.
1842. Bristol Mercury, 8 Sept., 11/1. The visitor was sure to find himself surrounded by a throng of pedestrian, equestrian, and ‘vehicularly’ conveyed spectators.
1882. Sala, Amer. Revis., x. 130/1. Pullman the beneficent did not fail … to be vehicularly manifest on the train which conveyed us from Washington to Philadelphia.
