Noun

(en noun)

Within a machine or machinery; any mechanical means for the conversion or control of motion, or the transmission or control of power.

Any combination of cams, gears, links, belts, chains and logical mechanical elements.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-03

, author=(Henry Petroski) , title=Opening Doors , volume=100, issue=2, page=112-3 , magazine= citation , passage=A doorknob of whatever roundish shape is effectively a continuum of levers, with the axis of the latching mechanism —known as the spindle—being the fulcrum about which the turning takes place.}}

A group of objects or parts that interact together. (as in Political machine )

A mental, physical or chemical process.

(philosophy) A theory that all natural phenomena can be explained by physical causes.

Noun

(en noun)

(obsolete) a thing whose name cannot be remembered; thingamajig, doohickey

* 1886 , Robert Brown, Spunyard and Spindrift, A Sailor Boy's Log of a Voyage Out and Home in a China Tea-clipper :

Then the names of all the other things on board a ship! I don't know half of them yet; even the sailors forget at times, and if the exact name of anything they want happens to slip from their memory, they call it a chicken-fixing, or a gadjet , or a timmey-noggy, or a wim-wom—just pro tem. , you know.

any device or machine, especially one whose name cannot be recalled. Often either clever or complicated.

He bought a neat new gadget for shredding potatoes.

That's quite a lot of gadgets you have collected. Do you use any of them?