Driving at night - I'm stoked!
I’m sure many of my friends will be able to relate to this. As I grow, um, more mature in years, I find driving at night to be increasingly a chore to be avoided. My driving skills are as good (or bad) as ever, but my eyesight is not what it once was (and what it once was, was not that great to begin with).
I am fortunate to have a good friend who doesn’t mind acting as my chauffeur after dark (Thanks, Greg!). The Word of the Day is “chauffeur.”
Chauffeur comes, pretty obviously, from French, and a verb that means “to heat.” The original chauffeur was literally “one who heats,” or a “stoker.” The chauffeur would stoke a steam engine to keep the boiler going and keep the engine running. The name stuck, even after steam engines gave way to internal combustion, gasoline powered vehicles. And the chauffeur became anyone employed to drive the vehicle.
By the way, the word “chafe” comes from the same roots. I’m lucky my buddy Greg doesn’t chafe when we’re heading somewhere and I tell him, “You’re driving.”
