Mexican overdrive
noun · first attested 1949
A gearbox setting named after a country that had nothing to do with it.
Neutral gear used while a vehicle is moving, especially to coast downhill with the engine disengaged and save fuel.
Record
- Relationship
- From the people of the place
- Confidence
- Well attestedThe place link is the standard scholarly account.
- Usage
- DerogatoryUsed to belittle the people or place it names.
- Attested
- 1949
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Mexico
- In English
Mexican overdrive
The phrase first appears in American truckers' slang, in a June 1949 column in the San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune, next to Mexican supercharger for a vented truck rig and Mexican side-loader for a shovel. Green's Dictionary of Slang files it under the attributive Mexican, the pattern behind Mexican breakfast and Mexican raise, in which the nationality marks a thing as makeshift or worth nothing. A popular story ties the term to drivers coasting the hills of the Carrera Panamericana, but that race was not first run until May 1950, after the phrase was already in print. Dictionaries record Georgia overdrive as an equivalent.