How to spell machinery

hear itma·chin·er·y/mə'ʃinəri/nounPrefixes and work

What it means: Mechanical equipment used to do work.

In a sentence: The farmer uses big machinery to plow the fields.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as machinary or machinerry.

Same family: machine, mechanism, mechanical, mechanics, machinist. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Machinery” comes from the word “machine,” which entered English from French and ultimately from the Greek word “mēkhanē,” meaning a device or means. Over time, “machinery” shifted from meaning literal machines to also describing the organized systems and processes that keep institutions and governments running.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

Try spelling it

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