machine

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A device consisting of fixed and moving parts that modifies mechanical energy and transmits it in a more useful form.
2. n. A simple device, such as a lever, a pulley, or an inclined plane, that alters the magnitude or direction, or both, of an applied force; a simple machine.
3. n. A system or device for doing work, as an automobile or a jackhammer, together with its power source and auxiliary equipment.
4. n. A system or device, such as a computer, that performs or assists in the performance of a human task: The machine is down.
5. n. An intricate natural system or organism, such as the human body.
6. n. A person who acts in a rigid, mechanical, or unconscious manner.
7. n. An organized group of people whose members are or appear to be under the control of one or more leaders: a political machine.
8. n. A device used to produce a stage effect, especially a mechanical means of lowering an actor onto the stage.
9. n. A literary device used to produce an effect, especially the introduction of a supernatural being to resolve a plot.
10. n. An answering machine: Leave a message on my machine if I'm not home.
11. adj. Of, relating to, or felt to resemble a machine: machine repairs; machine politics.
12. v. To cut, shape, or finish by machine.
13. v. To be cut, shaped, or finished by machine: This metal machines easily.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. An engine; an instrument of force.
2. n. In mech., in general, any instrument for the conversion of motion. Thus, a machine may be designed to change rapid motion into slow motion, as a crow-bar; or it may be intended to convert a reciprocating rectilinear motion into a uniform circular motion, etc. The lever, the wedge, the wheel and axle, the pulley, the screw, and the inclined plane are termed the simple machines. In practical mechanics the word has a restricted meaning: a single device, as a hammer, chisel, crowbar, or saw, or a very simple combination of moving parts, as tongs, shears, pincers, etc., for manual use, although comprised in the strict technical definition of machine, is always called a tool (which see); a device for applying or converting natural molar motion, like that of falling water, or of winds (as a water-wheel or windmill), or for converting molecular motion into molar motion (as a steam-engine, gas-engine, air-engine, or electric engine), is more generally, though not uniformly, called a motor. The distinction between the words tool and machine becomes quite indefinite with increased complication of parts. Such machines as are used in shaping materials in the construction of the parts of other machines, and many of those which perform work, such as sawing, boring, planing, riveting, etc., formerly done only by hand and still performed manually to a greater or less extent, are variously called machines, machine-tools, engine-tools, or simply tools, although their structure may involve much complexity; the terms machine-tool and engine-tool are more frequently employed, the latter being preferable as being more in accord with best usage. Machines receive general or special names from the work they perform or are designed to execute, either with reference to departments of the arts or of industry, as agricultural machines, hydraulic machines, wood-working machines, etc., or to their specific work, as planing-machines, sawing-machines, mowing-machines, etc.
3. n. A vehicle or conveyance, such as a coach, cab, gig, tricycle, bicycle, etc.
4. n. A fire-engine.
5. n. In the ancient theater, one of a number of contrivances in use for indicating a change of scene, as a rotating prism with different conventional scenery painted on its three sides, or a device for expressing a descent to the infernal regions, as the “Charonian steps,” for representing the passage of a god through the air across the stage (whence the dictum deus ex machina, applied to the mock supernatural or providential), etc. Such machines were very numerous in the fully developed Greek theater, and were copied in the Roman.
6. n. A literary contrivance for the working out of a plot; a supernatural agency, or artificial action, introduced into a poem or tale; machinery.
7. n. Any organization by which power not mechanical is applied and made effective; the whole complex system by which any organization or institution is carried on: as, the vital machine; the machine of government.
8. n. A strict organization of the working members of a political party, which enables its managers, through the distribution of offices, careful local supervision, and systematic correspondence, to maintain control of conventions and elections, and to secure a predominating in-fluence in the party for them-selves and their associates for their own ends; also, the body of managers of such an organization.
9. n. See the adjectives.
10. To contrive. Palsgrave.
11. To apply machinery to; form or effect by the aid of machinery; especially, to print or sew by means of a machine.
12. To furnish with the machinery of a plot.
13. To be employed upon or in machinery.
14. To act as or in the machinery of a drama; serve as the machine or effective agency in a literary plot.

Wiktionary

1. n. A mechanical or electrical device that performs or assists in the performance of human tasks, whether physical or computational, laborious or for entertainment.
2. n. archaic A vehicle operated mechanically; an automobile.
3. n. telephony, abbreviation An answering machine or, by extension, voice mail.
4. n. computing A computer.
5. n. figuratively A person or organisation that seemingly acts like a machine, being particularly efficient, single-minded, or unemotional.
6. n. Especially, the group that controls a political or similar organization.
7. n. euphemistic Penis.
8. v. to make by machinery.
9. v. to shape or finish by machinery.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. 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.
2. n. Any mechanical contrivance, as the wooden horse with which the Greeks entered Troy; a coach; a bicycle.
3. n. A person who acts mechanically or at the will of another.
4. n. A combination of persons acting together for a common purpose, with the agencies which they use.
5. n. Political Cant A political organization arranged and controlled by one or more leaders for selfish, private or partisan ends; the Tammany machine.
6. n. Supernatural agency in a poem, or a superhuman being introduced to perform some exploit.
7. v. 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.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a group that controls the activities of a political party
2. v. make by machinery
3. n. a motor vehicle with four wheels; usually propelled by an internal combustion engine
4. n. a device for overcoming resistance at one point by applying force at some other point
5. v. turn, shape, mold, or otherwise finish by machinery
6. n. an efficient person
7. n. any mechanical or electrical device that transmits or modifies energy to perform or assist in the performance of human tasks
8. n. an intricate organization that accomplishes its goals efficiently