AKICILJ

[mrissa]

Okay, people, help me out here. Page 60 of my manuscript. You're driving up to a mansion or, heck, a hotel or something. You pull under the sheltering thinger you can drive through, and it's open to the air on the sides but covered on the top. What's it called?

ETA: Got it, thanks cakmpls and timprov: portico or porte cochere.

I don't think mansions have carports, folks. I think tract homes have carports.

Comments

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

I would call it an awning. That's probably not the technical term, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Awnings are fabric, generally.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

http://www.hoteldeauville.com/images/hotel/awning.jpg

Like that?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, that's smaller than I was thinking of, and is suspended entirely from the building where my mental image had supports going to the ground. But cakmpls has it: porte cochere.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Canopy?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Canopies are also fabric.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Webster's Unabridged:
Main Entry: porte co·chere
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): -s
Etymology: French porte cochère, literally coach door
1 archaic : a passageway through a building or screen-wall designed to let vehicles pass from the street to an interior courtyard

That's what I'd call it. But if it was an ordinary house, I'd call it a carport.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That's it, and it's not an ordinary house. Thank you.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

In English, it's a portico.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

That's it! I was thinking 'porchere' for some reason.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

I'd also call it a carport.

[gaaneden.livejournal.com]

Carport.

[lexica510.livejournal.com]

How about "portico (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=portico)"?

por·ti·co
A porch or walkway with a roof supported by columns, often leading to the entrance of a building.
[Italian, from Latin porticus, from porta, gate. See per-² in Indo-European Roots.]
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

portico
n : a porch or entrance to a building consisting of a covered and often columned area
Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Words are what I do for a living. Glad to help.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, me too, supposedly. Sometimes they run off, though.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

And you're not even middle-aged!

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't use "portico" for something you drive a car through.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

I've seen mansions with carports (west side of Nashville, mainly). Not sure they belong in books, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Certainly not in books set in Finland.

[retrobabble.livejournal.com]

It's portico, but you have now forever branded into my mind it's a "sheltering thinger." *tickled*

You sound like me after a long day,"What's that thingy in the kitchen that keeps food cold?" (Yes, I was tired. Why do you ask? *g*)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For awhile I could never get the word "tent" to appear when I needed it. "Cloth thingy...that you sleep in...well, I don't, but CJ does...."

I also have perpetual trouble with today, tomorrow, and yesterday. My brain hands them to me randomly. I always get the verb tense right, though, so you can tell that if I say, "tomorrow we went to the store," I either mean "today we went to the store" or "yesterday we went to the store."

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I call it an "overhang." But I wouldn't recommend that for a book, even if you hadn't already found the word you like.

[palinade.livejournal.com]

I have a carport--it's just a detached garage that's unfinished. *g* There are actually a lot of carports around here... I think they were there before the 50s when attached garages and suburbia became the mecca of family living.

Then again, we are living in a house originally built in the mid-20s. :-)