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Word of the Day
for Saturday September 18, 2004
machination \mack-uh-NAY-shuhn; mash-\, noun: 1. The act of plotting. 2. A crafty scheme; a cunning design or plot intended to accomplish some usually evil end. He was telling me how he could have married the royal princess as a reward for his bravery in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he was an infantryman in the Kaiserliche und Konigliche Austro-Hungarian army, but for the machinations of the evil Archduke somebody-or-other. --George Lang, [1]Nobody Knows the Truffles I've Seen Alongside the various representations of sincere tears, then, are a series of representations of insincerity and emotional machination. --Tom Lutz, [2]Crying To keep away from them and steer clear of their inveigling schemes and grasping machinations . . . has been my constant life-long effort. --Jeff Stryker, "They Couldn't Resist: Oh, One Last Thing," [3]New York Times, May 21, 2000 He declared that the tale he could tell would not be of generals or kings, for the political machinations of the great, he said, he was and had been in no position to observe. --Steven Pressfield, [4]Gates of Fire _________________________________________________________ Machination derives from Latin machinatio, "a contrivance, a cunning device, a machination," from machinari, "to contrive, to devise, especially to plot evil." It is related to machine, from Latin machina, "any artificial contrivance for performing work." To machinate is to devise a plot, or engage in plotting. One who machinates is a machinator. |
