In general, any combination of bodies so connected that their relative motions are constrained, and by means of which force and motion may be transmitted and modified, as a screw and its nut, or a lever arranged to turn about a fulcrum or a pulley about its pivot, etc.; especially, a construction, more or less complex, consisting of a combination of moving parts, or simple mechanical elements, as wheels, levers, cams, etc., with their supports and connecting framework, calculated to constitute a prime mover, or to receive force and motion from a prime mover or from another machine, and transmit, modify, and apply them to the production of some desired mechanical effect or work, as weaving by a loom, or the excitation of electricity by an electrical machine.
Any mechanical contrivance, as the wooden horse with which the Greeks entered Troy; a coach; a bicycle.
A person who acts mechanically or at the will of another.
A combination of persons acting together for a common purpose, with the agencies which they use; as, the social machine.
A political organization arranged and controlled by one or more leaders for selfish, private or partisan ends; the Tammany machine.
Supernatural agency in a poem, or a superhuman being introduced to perform some exploit.
To subject to the action of machinery; to make, cut, shape, or modify with a machine; to effect by aid of machinery; to print with a printing machine.
The arrangement or relation of the parts of a machine; the parts of a machine, taken collectively; the arrangement or relation of the parts of anything as adapted to produce an effect; as, the mechanism of a watch; the mechanism of a sewing machine; the mechanism of a seed pod.
The series of causal relations that operate to produce an effect in any system; as, the mechanism of a chemical reaction.
Mechanical operation or action.
An ideal machine; a combination of movable bodies constituting a machine, but considered only with regard to relative movements.
