The ignition is the switch that starts a car. Key in, quarter turn, and the engine catches — that slot beside the steering wheel is the ignition.
You put the key in the ignition, turn the ignition on, leave the ignition off. The parts have their own names: ignition key, ignition switch, ignition coil. Cars with a start button have no keyhole left, and people still say ignition, because the word has outlived the thing. Its wider sense is the moment fuel catches fire — the ignition of the mixture in the cylinder, the ignition temperature of paper, ignition of a rocket motor at zero. The verb is ignite and the adjective is ignitable, and none of it means the engine itself: the ignition only starts it.
1nounignitionThe switch or system in a vehicle that starts the engine.
“He left the key in the ignition and the door wide open.”
2nounactThe act of setting something on fire, or the moment fuel starts to burn.
“A single spark caused the ignition of the vapour in the tank.”
ignition is a starting system.
Latin
ignītiō
English, today
ignition
Learned borrowing from Latin ignītiō.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, Vehicles & Machines
First appears in chapter 27 of A Man Called Ove.
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