1610 W. Folkingham Feudigraphia Pref. Verse A great Monarch hath those dire Combines Hatcht in the Heart.

1889 G. B. Shaw in Star 16 Aug. 2/3 When, after a few more years of competing syndicates, we have a great ‘combine’ of the Harris, Leslie, D'Oyly Carte, and all the other interests.

1899 T. M. Ellis Three Cat's-eye Rings i. 16 Why athleticism and æstheticism should not form a combine is a conundrum.

1936 W. H. Auden Look, Stranger! 43 Europe grew anxious about her health, Combines tottered, credits froze.

1936 Discovery Sept. 280/2 All types of industry from the combine employing its twenty thousand to the little workshop in the side street.

1955 Times 6 Aug. 7/7 Recently a multiple dairy, firm X, bought the business of a small dairyman with whom I had dealt for many years. Some days later I was surprised to find the milk of firm Y—another combine—delivered to me.

1887 Boston (Mass.) Jrnl. 16 of the members..have formed what the New York Aldermen would call a ‘combine’, and demand $10,000 apiece before they will vote.

1888 Evening Post (N.Y.) 6 Mar. 4 An anti-Platt combine composed of seven senators.

1888 A. Roberts U.S. Consular Rep. Sept. 401 The market being controlled by the coal combine.

1857 Illinois State Register (Springfield) 15 July 3/2 In the afternoon the combined mower and the Illinois mower were put upon trial, in a beautiful field of timothy.

1900 D. McK. Wright Wisps of Tussock 54 The engine beats and the combine sings to the drays that are leading in.

1923 J. R. Bond Farm Implements & Machinery ix. 119 Combined fertiliser and seed drills are also made for ridge work.

1926 Kansas City (Missouri) Star 23 June Hundreds of combines will be in the fields in southern, central, and western Kansas by Wednesday.

1927 Implement & Machinery Rev. LII. 1072/2 The combined harvester and thrasher made its first appearance at the Paris Show,..American firms have..been developing the combined harvester and thrasher for some years.

1929 Inst. Res. Agric. Engin. (Oxf. Univ.) Bull. No. 3. 7 Throughout this report the Combine Harvester or Harvester-Thresher is referred to as the ‘combine’.

1929 Inst. Res. Agric. Engin. (Oxf. Univ.) Bull. No. 3. 7 The combine may be described as consisting of the knife and platform canvas of a binder attached to a travelling threshing machine.

1930 Engineering 18 July 83/1 But since suitable British combine machines have been placed on the market, a considerable number of orders have been secured by home firms.

1930 Manch. Guardian 16 Sept. 9/2 Great factories are now being equipped in Russia, so that tractors, combine-harvesters, milking machines, and all the equipment of a mechanised agricultural industry may be furnished in the future from native sources.

1932 Discovery Jan. 11/2 The combine-harvester—a machine in which a reaper is attached to a portable threshing machine and the whole is drawn by a tractor through the standing corn, leaving a trail of sacks of threshed grain and another of straw in its wake.

1941 Jrnl. Min. Agric. 48 186 A combine drill is now generally accepted as being superior to a seed drill and a broadcast fertilizer used separately.

1955 Times 10 May 17/5 The sombre picture of the weather last year threw into sharp relief the useful services performed by the combine harvester.

1957 Times 14 Oct. 2/6 Combine drills which place the fertilizer alongside the seed to give the seedlings a ready supply of plant food from the start of growth.

1958 Listener 16 Oct. 593/2 Some farmers were pushing or pulling self-propelled combines along with tractors.