clockwork
/ˈklɒkwəːk
/noun [mass noun]
A mechanism with a spring and toothed gearwheels, used to drive a mechanical clock, toy, or other device: quartz watches are more accurate than those driven by clockwork...
- Of inventions which proved to have major significance, only the lens and clockwork travelled in the opposite direction, eastwards across Eurasia.
- My mother was like the evil clockwork of some kind of villainous clock gone haywire.
- Loves are lost, hearts are broken, games become mere clockwork, and his passion dies.
adjective [attributive]
1Driven by clockwork: a clockwork motor...
- They were real passions, and at first I thought ‘hey, wouldn't it be good to use the Internet to trade clockwork tin toys’.
- Danielle jumped up and down and clapped her hands above her head like a clockwork toy gone haywire.
- The baroque churches are glorious, chocolate-box designs, as playful and loveable as the clockwork stars of Toccata for Toy Trains.
1.1Very smooth and regular: the clockwork precision of the galaxy...
- Their bodies seemed like a temple for artistic expression that gestured and moved with clockwork precision.
- With clockwork precision 50 women completed it in 10.42 hours.
- He performed a few feats with clockwork precision.
1.2Repetitive and predictable: it was a clockwork existence for the children...
- Jolted by a mugging into the feeling that he is leading a clockwork, incomplete existence, Walker subsequently walks out on his spouse.
- Children slept in dormitories, they ate together in silence, and they lived their days to a clockwork routine which never varied.
- Kant's private life is often parodied as one of clockwork routine, fastidious, donnish, and self-centred.
Phrases
as regular as clockwork
like clockwork