* means of carrying or transporting something (planes, trains, and other vehicles) such as a) motor vehicle or b) a piece of mechanized equipment - Websters Online Dictionary
* 1) any means in or by which someone travels or something is carried or conveyed; a means of conveyance or transport: a motor vehicle; space vehicles. 2) conveyance moving on wheels, runners, tracks, or the like, as a cart, sled, automobile, or tractor. - dictionary.com
* a machine, usually with wheels and an engine, used for transporting people or goods, especially on land - Cambridge Dictionary
Any of these definitions could have been applied successfully to the series of questions on the website without ambiguity (edit: without ambiguity, but each would have led to different sets of conclusions). Which is to say, the entire point of the excercise reduces down to finding out which definition of the word someone is working from. This is only a problem if we're dealing with something that can't be defined, or something that we refuse to define.
As it’s enforced today, that would be relatively easy to define, but I don’t think anyone wants to actually say out loud what that definition would be.
This is why legal documents often have important definitions listed. In the last case, the answer hinges on the definition of “machine”. Pick a definition of that, and I’ll tell you if a boat is a vehicle.
Continuing to stick with the Cambridge Dictionary.
> ((a piece of (the set of necessary tools, clothing, etc. for a particular purpose) with (some; an amount that is not exact but is fewer than many) moving parts that uses power to do a particular type of work) used for transporting people or goods)
Yup, that's technically a rowboat - as long as it has oars included (whether or not they're physically attached: "set of"). Take the oars out of the equation, and it's not a machine anymore...just a piece of a vehicle (like how a tire isn't a car).
* means of carrying or transporting something (planes, trains, and other vehicles) such as a) motor vehicle or b) a piece of mechanized equipment - Websters Online Dictionary
* 1) any means in or by which someone travels or something is carried or conveyed; a means of conveyance or transport: a motor vehicle; space vehicles. 2) conveyance moving on wheels, runners, tracks, or the like, as a cart, sled, automobile, or tractor. - dictionary.com
* a machine, usually with wheels and an engine, used for transporting people or goods, especially on land - Cambridge Dictionary
Any of these definitions could have been applied successfully to the series of questions on the website without ambiguity (edit: without ambiguity, but each would have led to different sets of conclusions). Which is to say, the entire point of the excercise reduces down to finding out which definition of the word someone is working from. This is only a problem if we're dealing with something that can't be defined, or something that we refuse to define.