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Definition of Mainspring
1. Noun. The most important spring in a mechanical device (especially a clock or watch); as it uncoils it drives the mechanism.
Definition of Mainspring
1. n. The principal or most important spring in a piece of mechanism, especially the moving spring of a watch or clock or the spring in a gunlock which impels the hammer. Hence: The chief or most powerful motive; the efficient cause of action.
Definition of Mainspring
1. Noun. The principal spring of a clockwork mechanism, that drives it by uncoiling. ¹
2. Noun. (figuratively) The most important reason for something. ¹
¹ Source: wiktionary.com
Definition of Mainspring
1. [n -S]
Lexicographical Neighbors of Mainspring
Literary usage of Mainspring
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. The watchmakers' hand-book by Claudius Saunier (1881)
"THE mainspring. 585. A free and uniform action of the mainspring is one of the
... To mate the eye in a mainspring.—Every watchmaker knows that this is ..."
2. The Science of Jurisprudence: A Treatise in which the Growth of Positive Law by Hannis Taylor (1908)
"mainspring of modern constitution. Conventional as distinguished from written code.
ern ministerial system, through whose silent growth the sovereignty of ..."
3. The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors by Charles Wells Moulton (1904)
""Respectability" may have proved his bane in literature, though it was the
mainspring of his social and political life.—SWIFT, LINDSAY, 1900, Our Literary ..."
4. Glossary of Terms and Phrases by Henry Percy Smith (1883)
"... at each beat from the action of the wheelwork, the motion of which—produced
by the weight or mainspring—it thus regulates, is the E. The E.- Escarpment. ..."
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