Noun

(en noun)

A device that directs and controls energy, often in the form of movement or electricity, to produce a certain effect.

* {{quote-magazine, title=A better waterworks, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838

, page=5 (Technology Quarterly), magazine=(The Economist) citation , passage=An artificial kidney these days still means a refrigerator-sized dialysis machine . Such devices mimic the way real kidneys cleanse blood and eject impurities and surplus water as urine.}}

(archaic) A vehicle operated mechanically; an automobile.

(telephony, abbreviation) An answering machine or, by extension, voice mail.

(computing) A computer.

(figuratively) A person or organisation that seemingly acts like a machine, being particularly efficient, single-minded, or unemotional.

Especially, the group that controls a political or similar organization; a combination of persons acting together for a common purpose, with the agencies which they use.

* Landor

The whole machine of government ought not to bear upon the people with a weight so heavy and oppressive.

Supernatural agency in a poem, or a superhuman being introduced to perform some exploit.

(Addison)

(euphemistic, obsolete) Penis.

{{quote-Fanny Hill, part=3 , He now resumes his attempts in more form: first, he put one of the pillows under me, to give the blank of his aim a more favourable elevation, and another under my head, in ease of it; then spreading my thighs, and placing himself standing between them, made them rest upon his hips; applying then the point of his machine to the slit, into which he sought entrance.}}

Noun

(wikipedia gear)

(uncountable) equipment or paraphernalia, especially that used for an athletic endeavor.

Clothing; garments.

* Spenser

Array thyself in thy most gorgeous gear .

(obsolete) Goods; property; household items.

(Chaucer)

* Robynson (More's Utopia)

Homely gear and common ware.

(countable) a wheel with grooves (teeth) engraved on the outer circumference, such that two such devices can interlock and convey motion from one to the other.

(countable) a particular combination or choice of interlocking gears, such that a particular gear ratio is achieved.

(countable) A configuration of the transmission of a motor car so as to achieve a particular ratio of engine to axle torque

(slang) recreational drugs

* 2003 , Marianne Hancock, Looking for Oliver (page 90)

Have you got any gear ? Dominic, have you got any acid?

(uncountable, archaic) stuff.

* 1662 , , Book III, A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More, p. 113:

"When he was digged up, which was in the presence of the Magistracy of the Town, his body was found entire, not at all putrid, no ill smell about him, saving the mustiness of the grave-Clothes, his joynts limber and flexible, as in those that are alive, his skin only flaccid, but a more fresh grown in the room of it, the wound of his throat gaping, but no gear nor corruption in it; there was also observed a Magical mark in the great toe of his right foot, viz. an Excrescency in the form of a Rose."

(obsolete) Business matters; affairs; concern.

* Spenser

Thus go they both together to their gear .

(obsolete, UK, dialect) Anything worthless; nonsense; rubbish.

(Wright)

* Latimer

That servant of his that confessed and uttered this gear was an honest man.