Machine

Webster's Dictionary of the English Language

·noun A person who acts mechanically or at will of another.

II. Machine ·noun Supernatural agency in a poem, or a superhuman being introduced to perform some exploit.

III. Machine ·noun Any mechanical contrivance, as the wooden horse with which the Greeks entered Troy; a coach; a bicycle.

IV. Machine ·vt To subject to the action of machinery; to effect by aid of machinery; to print with a printing machine.

V. Machine ·noun A political organization arranged and controlled by one or more leaders for selfish, private or partisan ends.

VI. Machine ·noun A combination of persons acting together for a common purpose, with the agencies which they use; as, the social machine.

VII. Machine ·noun 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.

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