mechanicalme‧chan‧i‧cal /mɪˈkænɪkəl/ ●●○ adjective 
The flight has been cancelled due to mechanical failure. The plane had to make an emergency landing because of mechanical problems.2using power from an engine or machine to do a particular kind of work: a mechanical digger a mechanical device3a mechanical action, reply etc is one you do without thinking, and has been done many times before: He was asked the same question so many times that the answer became mechanical.4someone who is mechanical understands how machines work5technical relating to or produced by physical forces: the mechanical properties of solids—mechanically /-kli/ adverb: The actors spoke their lines mechanically, hardly caring about the meaning. I’m not very mechanically minded (=not good at understanding how machines work and repairing them).
WORD ORIGINmechanical
Origin:
1400-1500 Late Latin mechanicus, from Greek, from mechane ‘machine’EXAMPLES FROM OTHER DICTIONARIES
- A mechanical problem may be to blame for the crash.
- A mechanical Santa made toys in the store window.
- Flemma said that a reliable mechanical device was needed for the thousands of patients who die while awaiting human heart transplants.
- In a bakery, the bread is rarely kneaded by hand but by large mechanical mixers.
- The flight has been canceled due to mechanical failure.
- the space shuttle's mechanical arm
- As one microchip usually replaces many mechanical parts, the amount of labour needed in assembly is reduced.
- But the Earth as mechanical device has been a harder idea to swallow.
- He loved anything mechanical, did Walter.
- He watched the men harden to the mechanical slaughter.
- Of course anything as scientific as a mechanical test has not always found favour with traditional craftsmen or indeed with business men.
- Oliver Evans had been a genius of steam and iron, of the mechanical arts.
- This occurs as the result of toxins that form as mechanical energy is converted to electrical energy.
- Unlike mechanical clocks, which are completely blind to their surroundings, a biological clock gets reset every day by the sun.
Longman Language Activatorrelating to or done by machines
using machines, or getting power from an engine: · In a bakery, the bread is rarely kneaded by hand but by large mechanical mixers.mechanical problem/fault/failure (=when a machine is not working properly): · A mechanical problem may be to blame for the crash.mechanical device: · Flemma said that a reliable mechanical device was needed for the thousands of patients who die while awaiting human heart transplants.
automatic washing machines, weapons etc are designed to operate by themselves, without much human control or attention: · Automatic lights had come on in various parts of the house.· The camera has a 32mm glass lens, and its automatic shutter allows you to take photos in near-darkness without a flash.automatic weapon/rifle (=one that can fire many bullets quickly): · The soldiers lay on the highway with their automatic rifles beside them.
WORD SETSball bearing, nounbelt, nouncog, nouncombustion chamber, nounconveyor belt, nouncoolant, nouncooling system, nouncrank, verbdifferential, noundisengage, verbdismantle, verbdrive, nounfour-stroke engine, nounfuel cell, nounfulcrum, noungear, nounheat pump, nounhydraulic, adjectiveinertia, nounmechanical, adjectivemechanical engineering, nounmill, nounmillstone, nounmillwheel, nounmomentum, nounmotive, adjectiveneutral, nounnuclear reactor, nounoil pan, nounpivot, nounpropulsion, nounpulley, nounpump, nounrace, verbratchet, nounreactor, nounregulate, verbretract, verbrev, verbrev, nounrotor, nounselector, nounstarter motor, nounstress, nounstressed, adjectivestrip, verbsump, nounsupercharged, adjectivetemplate, nountop gear, nountorque, nountwo-stroke, adjectiveuniversal joint, nounvalve, nounwheel, nounwinch, nounwindlass, noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE ENTRY The flight has been cancelled due to mechanical failure.COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
The flight has been cancelled due to mechanical failure. (=using power from an engine or machine)· One day it will be technically possible to replace patients’ hearts with mechanical devices.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE CORPUSADVERB· The basic picture we need is a purely mechanical one.· She was so mesmerised by their fixed scrutiny that her action was purely mechanical.· The former, in so far as he considers explanations at all, inclines to those that stress the purely mechanical relations between events.· The thinker, on the other hand, finds purely mechanical explanations inadequate.
NOUN· With the gradual introduction of mechanical clocks around the fourteenth century, hours of standard length became general.· Unlike mechanical clocks, which are completely blind to their surroundings, a biological clock gets reset every day by the sun.· The first mechanical clocks were large and unwieldy, and there was soon a desire for smaller and more portable mechanisms.· But like a single gear in a mechanical clock, timeless can not keep good time all by itself.· Despite the invention of the mechanical clock, for most people time remained uneven in quality.· According to our present knowledge, this machine was the nearest the artificers of antiquity came to inventing a truly mechanical clock.· It would seem that the date of the invention of the mechanical clock is probably some time between 1280 and 1300.
· No mechanical devices or hormones are used.· But the Earth as mechanical device has been a harder idea to swallow.· Similar mechanical devices are planned for the space station.· Simple mechanical devices were placed in the test room to maintain an accurate record of output.
· Read in studio Thieves have used a mechanical digger to smash their way into a supermarket and steal a safe.· The police admit there's little shopkeepers can do to protect their property from a mechanical digger.· The operator of the mechanical digger who unearthed both was not sure.
· This occurs as the result of toxins that form as mechanical energy is converted to electrical energy.· Together with differential rotation, this causes a large amount of mechanical energy and magnetic flux to pass through the surface.· The accumulation of capital, and hence the ownership of capital, was central in harnessing the productive power of mechanical energy.
· The electronics package will demand more space within the casing than the mechanical engineers can provide.· I think the world will always need mechanical engineers.· Tien insists he wants to go back to teaching and research as a mechanical engineer.· At a drop zone there she met Steve, a tall, outgoing mechanical engineer who built jet engines.· In 1923 Gresley became chief mechanical engineer of the London and North Eastern, following the merger of independent companies into groups.
· They were of various sizes and worked in the vehicle, aerospace, mechanical engineering and electronics industries.· Low payers were public administration, wholesale distribution, metal manufacture and mechanical engineering.· In the survey mentioned above, the health sector was second only to mechanical engineering in the proportion of employers experiencing difficulties.· The first year at university I had a very steady boyfriend who was doing a similar course as me but mechanical engineering.· The next industry to adopt the technique widely is likely to be mechanical engineering.· The Group invested £1.5 million in the United Arab Emirates to establish two high quality mechanical engineering workshops.· Even after the main recession, heavy national declines occurred in mechanical engineering, motor vehicles and metals.
· Police say mechanical failure has not yet been ruled out.· The crashes have been attributed to a variety of problems, from human error to software glitches to mechanical failure.· It was no goddam accident, no goddam mechanical failure, some one deliberately unhitched that car.· Nothing, save an accident or mechanical failure could keep him from winning.· Take-off even in the conventional manner is a critical phase, unforgiving of mechanical failure or human error.· If it proves to be a mechanical failure, additional safety measures may be required.· Due to mechanical failure the remaining six races had to be abandoned.· For a long time, three main theories dominated discussion of the tragedy: bomb, missile or mechanical failure.
· It is thought he lifted the cab after a mechanical fault and it crashed on top of him.· Driver error, or mechanical fault?· Police believe it was a mechanical fault.
· When the astronaut is in a uniform gravitational field he is incapable of determining his motion by any mechanical means.· It employs mechanical means to organise molecules into a monolayer on the surface of a liquid.· In the latter case, thermal expansion of the wire proportional to the heating is sensed by mechanical means.· Examples of technical failures of mechanical means of soil conservation have already been given in Chapter 5.· Their efforts certainly often lacked the rhythm and phrasing suitable for interpretation by physical and not mechanical means.
· But there are conservatives, who, while acknowledging the successes of quantum mechanical methods, caution against complacency.· There are various mechanical methods, such as spring-line based units.· And because organisms replicate themselves, they could be far less expensive than chemical or mechanical methods.
· This utilitarian emphasis lay at the heart of William Sellers's mechanical philosophy.
· Lei Feng is under a truck fixing a mechanical problem.· On any given day, nearly half of its planes could not fly because of mechanical problems.· Toiv confirmed that the aircraft had mechanical problems.· The vehicles ended up on used car lots where buyers were unaware of past mechanical problems.· The choice of dimensions appropriate to a quantum mechanical problem will depend on the number of independent possibilities the system possesses.· Do see weaknesses as mechanical problems, which, with consistent and focused tweaking, you can fix.· Well that's enough of mechanical problems lets have some questions.· The man claims he overheard cockpit conversation about mechanical problems, not paperwork.
· I have always thought it was the Ofsted view of education as a mechanical process that eliminated sweetness and light.· But it does require a peculiarly narrow and mechanical process of thought and it discourages all other.· The analogy with a mechanical process no longer rings true and it is unlikely that this case will be followed.· Lister was the inventor of several mechanical processes which made his fortune, and he duly became Lord Masham.· Later, punched-card and computer technology made this an entirely mechanical process.· They seemed demoralized and miserable, operating an endless mechanical process.· The mechanical process of elegant correction and rephrasing cut out the ugly, self-stultifying labouring of mistakes.· Writing an essay is not a mechanical process.
· Research in other cell lines has suggested that the mechanical properties of the substratum are important in the maintenance of cellular differentiation.· A rather less important effect, from the practical point of view, is to change the mechanical properties.· The other mechanical properties of wood are very much what we should expect from a bundle of tubes or fibres.· The presence of this amount of water in the polymer also affects its mechanical properties.· Rock mechanical property computations, estimation of in-situ stress directions and fracture detection completed the study.· Each element is mathematically coupled to its neighbours in a way which reflects the physical and mechanical properties of the structure.
· The first system to break away from the conventional mechanical systems was blessed with the name of Le Stik.· Most mechanical systems follow the clock.· This mechanical system was not directly presented to our five senses.· This means that the performance of human systems tends to be far more variable and less predictable than that of mechanical systems.· In Section 24.3, therefore, we digress from fluid dynamics to look at a non-fluid mechanical system.· All over the world measurements are continually being made on quantum mechanical systems.· It is these induced voltages which are used to extract energy from the mechanical system and provide electromagnetic damping.
· Twenty two patients managed with spontaneous breathing of 28-40% oxygen and the others needed mechanical ventilation.· An effort should be made to improve pulmonary function as much as possible; mechanical ventilation may be needed in some cases.· Before Waite J. the doctors were unanimous that mechanical ventilation should not be provided, if the occasion for it arose.· They had built-in wardrobes in all bedrooms and a whole-house mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery.· Important projects include the development of advanced mechanical ventilation and heat recovery systems, right through from conception to full commercialisation.
· We have virtually finished the mechanical work on it and the engine and chassis are in almost original condition.· Put the board to one side and start the mechanical work.
WORD FAMILYnounmachinemachinerymachinistmechanicmechanicsmechanismmechanizationadjectivemechanicalmechanizedmechanisticverbmachinemechanizeadverbmechanicallymechanistically
1affecting or involving a machine: The flight has been cancelled due to mechanical failure. The plane had to make an emergency landing because of mechanical problems.2using power from an engine or machine to do a particular kind of work: a mechanical digger a mechanical device3a mechanical action, reply etc is one you do without thinking, and has been done many times before: He was asked the same question so many times that the answer became mechanical.4someone who is mechanical understands how machines work5technical relating to or produced by physical forces: the mechanical properties of solids—mechanically /-kli/ adverb: The actors spoke their lines mechanically, hardly caring about the meaning. I’m not very mechanically minded (=not good at understanding how machines work and repairing them).