Displacement: It's more commonly used by Americans, but you can still find yourself standing amid car fans who ask "what's your displacement?" Thoughts turn quickly to the last time you did a belly flop in the local swimming pool (or perhaps more toilet-related matters).
However, despite its painful connotations, moving liquids is very much in line with this motoring term. Displacement is the measure of the total volume of all the cylinders in the engine block, usually given in cubic centimetres or litres.
More commonly on this side of the Atlantic you hear people refer to the cc of their engine, but there are still some ostriches out there who refer to cubic inches.
The measurement is the total volume of air or air-fuel mixture an engine is theoretically capable of drawing into all cylinders during one operating cycle.
For the mathematicians, engine displacement is equal to (bore) x (bore) x (stroke) x (number of pistons) x (.785). Bore is the measurement of the diameter of each cylinder and stroke is the distance the piston travels one-way within the cylinder.