アイドリング

1961 is Shogakukan's early printed point for アイドリング: Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten cites Hoshino Yoshiro's My Car, explaining an engine turning while the car is stopped. The English source is idling, the present participle of idle. English dictionaries define an idling engine as running at low power while not doing useful work, and Merriam-Webster records idle before the 12th century. The borrowing route is postwar automotive and machine vocabulary, especially Japan's 1960s my-car boom. In technical Japanese, アイドリング names no-load engine operation, and アイドリングストップ names stopping the engine while parked or waiting. The field also brought words such as エンジン, クラッチ, アクセル, and ニュートラル into everyday driving language. Traffic signs and city rules later made アイドリングストップ familiar outside repair manuals. Modern Japanese extends アイドリング beyond engines. In offices or sports, アイドリング中 can mean warming up or getting ready before full activity. English idling more often suggests wasting time, an inactive factory, or an engine running with no useful output; the English phrasal verb idle away means to waste time. A short example is 会議前はまだアイドリング中です, which sounds like preparation in Japanese rather than laziness.