engine

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A machine that turns fuel or power into movement, used to drive vehicles and other machines.

   The car wouldn't start because the engine was broken.

2. 2
   noun

   A piece of software that performs a particular technical task.

   He improved the search engine to return faster results.

3. 3
   noun

   Something that drives growth or change forward.

   Small businesses are often the engine of the economy.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Engine came through Old French engin from Latin ingenium, meaning “talent” or “device.” Its earliest English senses included ingenuity, cunning, and natural talent; it then came to mean a product of ingenuity, a plot or snare, and a tool or large mechanical weapon. By the mid-16th century it could denote a complex device whose moving parts worked together.

From Middle English engyn, from Anglo-Norman engine, Old French engin (“skill, cleverness, war machine”), from Latin ingenium (“innate or natural quality, nature, genius, a genius, an invention, (in Late Latin) a war-engine, battering-ram”), related to ingignō (“to instil by birth, implant, produce in”). Compare gin, ingenious, engineer.

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External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
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