machineryn.

1687 W. Winstanley Lives Eng. Poets 216 Vying with the Opera's of Italy, in the Pomp of Scenes, Marchinry [sic] and Musical performance.

1842 J. Gwilt Encycl. Archit. Gloss. 1019 Postscenium or Parascenium, in ancient architecture, the back part of the theatre, where the machinery was deposited, and where the actors retired to robe themselves.

1990 Opera Now May 34/2 As a grand finale for this opera, Apollo takes Orfeo up with him in the machinery.

1713 R. Steele Englishman No. 52. 336 His Machinary is not a Jargon of Heathenism and Christianity.

1714 A. Pope Rape of Lock (new ed.) Ep. The Machinery, Madam, is a Term invented by the Criticks, to signify that Part which the Deities, Angels, or Dæmons, are made to act in a Poem.

1756 J. Warton Ess. on Pope I. iv. 219 The insertion of the machinery of the sylphs..is one of the happiest efforts of judgment and art.

1848 A. Jameson Sacred & Legendary Art (1850) 129 The angels always allowable as machinery, have here a particular propriety.

1861 E. O'Curry Lect. MS Materials 242 The rules of these compositions permitted the introduction of a certain amount of poetic machinery.

1992 N.Y. Times Bk. Rev. 12 Jan. 26/3 [The novel] requires a certain amount of narrative scaffolding, and there are readers..who may be disturbed by the sound of creaking machinery.

1731 N. Bailey Universal Etymol. Eng. Dict. (ed. 2) II Machinery.

1762 A. Dickson Treat. Agric. ii. viii. 197 The more machinery there is in any instrument, it is the more liable to be broken.

1776 A. Smith Inq. Wealth of Nations I. i. xi. 306 In consequence of better machinery..a much smaller quantity of labour becomes requisite. View more context for this quotation

1803 Med. & Physical Jrnl. 9 291 The communication is then formed and interrupted alternately by means of machinery.

1872 J. Yeats Techn. Hist. Commerce 180 Lock-making was undoubtedly the parent of much of our machinery.

1878 W. S. Jevons Polit. Econ. 73 Spinning machinery, which can do an immense quantity of work compared with the number of hands employed.

1913 J. Muir Story of my Boyhood vi. 202 We were not allowed a moment's rest. The hoes had to be kept working up and down as steadily as if they were moved by machinery.

1977 P. Larkin Let. 24 Oct. in Sel. Lett. (1992) 571 Had they some special machinery in those days that made misprints impossible?

1992 D. Morgan Rising in West iii. xx. 389 There was..so much that was familiar:..lonely weathered barns, fading signs, farmyards full of rusting farm machinery.

1736 Gentleman's Mag. Jan. 6/1 As the whole World is a Machinery it admits of nobody to live idle in it.

1823 T. Jefferson Let. 12 June in Writings (1984) 1470 We believed that the complicated organization of kings, nobles, and priests, was not the wisest nor the best..that the trappings of such a machinery, consumed..those earnings of industry..they were meant to protect.

1849 T. B. Macaulay Hist. Eng. I. iii. 290 The beacons..were regarded rather as curious relics of ancient manners than as parts of a machinery necessary to the safety of the state.

1864 Spectator 438 The County franchise..is..a machinery for returning anybody the local peers choose to nominate.

1890 C. Gross Gild Merchant I. 144 It is evident that the staple was primarily a fiscal organ of the crown, facilitating the collection of the royal customs. It also ensured the quality of the goods exported by providing a machinery for viewing and marking them.

1928 E. M. Forster Eternal Moment 30 All these tubes and buttons and machineries neither came into the world with us, nor will they follow us out.

1934 A. Huxley Let. 5 Mar. (1969) 378 I feel in need of a change of scene, being stickily entangled in a novel I can't quite find a satisfactory machinery for.

1979 P. Nihalani et al. Indian & Brit. Eng. (at cited word) Machineries of all kinds are available from ready stocks.

1992 N.Y. Times 29 Dec. a15/3 The crime [sc. female mutilation] is only glancingly acknowledged by government information machineries and journalism.

1758 W. Battie Treat. Madness iii. 15 In case the brain is very unlike a gland in any material circumstance, this whole machinery is immediately destroyed.

1788 E. Gibbon Decline & Fall V. l. 183 The nice and artificial machinery of the Greek and Roman republics.

1818 H. Hallam View Europe Middle Ages I. iii. 342 The terrible and odious machinery of a police.

1818 S. T. Coleridge Gen. Introd. or Treat. on Method 23 in Encycl. Metrop. I The ancients, as well as the moderns, had their machinery for the extemporaneous coinage of intellect.

1852 W. E. Gladstone Functions of Laymen in Church 25 The machinery for applying our principles to executory details is..very imperfect.

1859 C. Darwin Origin of Species iv. 83 She [sc. Nature] can act..on the whole machinery of life.

1895 Wales Aug. 349/1 The machinery of government is rather cumbersome.

1910 Encycl. Brit. I. 385/1 It [sc. the law] failed of its object because it did not provide any adequate machinery for the resumption by the state of land held in excess of the prescribed amount.

1942 G. M. Trevelyan Eng. Social Hist. xvii. 513 The men of the new Oxford movement protested against the interference of the State with ecclesiastical revenues, but no other machinery existed to effect these necessary changes.

1964 Amer. Jrnl. Physics 32 644/1 Demonstration must be deferred until the student has become acquainted with at least ‘the machinery of the calculus’.

1966 T. Lupton Managem. & Social Sci. ii. 43 Appropriate machinery for the redress of grievances.

1989 Cineaste Sept. 38/1 At this point he gives himself up to the military machinery, joining the Special Forces and participating in the most dangerous operations.