Machinery Meaning
/məˈʃiːnəɹi/Definition, CEFR level B1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounThe machines constituting a production apparatus, in a plant etc., collectively.
nounThe working parts of a machine as a group.
Sentence Examples
Machinery uses a lot of electricity.
Machinery dispenses with much labor.
The factory decided to do away with the old machinery.
CEFR Practice Quiz
Because of the dusty environment, all the heavy ____ in the warehouse requires frequent cleaning.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The heavy ____ was used to clear the land and prepare it for the new housing development project.
Word Origin & History
From machine + -ery. Compare French machinerie.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"The external aspect of the oficina was not unlike that of a north-country coal or iron mine—tall chimneys and machinery, corrugated iron buildings, offices and houses, the shanties of workmen, a high bank of refuse."
— 1890, William Howard Russell, “Iquique to the Pampas”, in A Visit to Chile and the Nitrate Fields of Tarapacá, Etc., London: J[ames] S[prent] Virtue & Co., […], page 171:
"One or two wondered then, as if suddenly recalling the outlander, how he would manage, or if he would perish, up there among his unholy modern machineries that puffed out frozen steam to store the deer meat and shot fowl for him, […] "And there were big boxes lugged up there, done up in iron clasps. Cruel-cold earth in those." […] "Like corpse boxes," someone else suggested, down in the half-light, snug fust of the village drinking shop."
— 2013, Tanith Lee, “Their Monstrous Minds”, in Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling, editors, Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fantasy, New York, N.Y.: Tor Books, →ISBN:
"All Mr. Yeats's grotesque machinery of sowlths and tevishes and sheogues leaves us without a shudder; his fantasies are stage-properties of the most unillusive kind."
— 2013, Norman A. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats:
"Since the three histone-fold domain amino acids are located at the surface of the α-helix 2 domain that is responsible for the formation of H3-H4 dimers and accessible in prenucleosomal complexes, it has been suggested that the specificity associated with these amino acid positions derives from interactions with different assembly or post-translational-modification machineries."
— 2015 October 28, “Comparing the Assembly and Handedness Dynamics of (H3.3-H4) 2 Tetrasomes to Canonical Tetrasomes”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI:
Explore More B1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
Because of the dusty environment, all the heavy ____ in the warehouse requires frequent cleaning.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The heavy ____ was used to clear the land and prepare it for the new housing development project.