"well-oiled machine" meaning in English

See well-oiled machine in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: well-oiled machines [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|head=well-oiled machine}} well-oiled machine (plural well-oiled machines)
  1. Something that operates capably through the effective coordination of many parts.
    Sense id: en-well-oiled_machine-en-noun-wExV6nVX Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for well-oiled machine meaning in English (1.7kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "well-oiled machines",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "head": "well-oiled machine"
      },
      "expansion": "well-oiled machine (plural well-oiled machines)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2008, Zane, Succulent: Chocolate Flava II, page 2",
          "text": "Trevor was the firm's facilities manager and it was his job to make sure that their office ran like a well-oiled machine and that the partners, attorneys, and staff were comfortable.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Jeanine Basinger, The Star Machine, page 13",
          "text": "A movie studio in the so-called golden era was a well-oiled machine with everything needed to make movies right in place on the studio lot.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004, Carolyn Orange, 44 Smart Strategies for Avoiding Classroom Mistakes, page 16",
          "text": "Contrary to this dismal picture is the popular concept of the classroom that runs like a well-oiled machine, smoothly, flawlessly, functioning at full capacity, producing maximum output.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1850, The Knickerbocker; or, New-York monthly magazine, \"Editor's Table\", p. 573",
          "text": "The writer is never enthusiastic and rarely Imaginative. His lines flow with the smoothness of a well-oiled machine."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something that operates capably through the effective coordination of many parts."
      ],
      "id": "en-well-oiled_machine-en-noun-wExV6nVX"
    }
  ],
  "word": "well-oiled machine"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "well-oiled machines",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "head": "well-oiled machine"
      },
      "expansion": "well-oiled machine (plural well-oiled machines)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2008, Zane, Succulent: Chocolate Flava II, page 2",
          "text": "Trevor was the firm's facilities manager and it was his job to make sure that their office ran like a well-oiled machine and that the partners, attorneys, and staff were comfortable.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Jeanine Basinger, The Star Machine, page 13",
          "text": "A movie studio in the so-called golden era was a well-oiled machine with everything needed to make movies right in place on the studio lot.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004, Carolyn Orange, 44 Smart Strategies for Avoiding Classroom Mistakes, page 16",
          "text": "Contrary to this dismal picture is the popular concept of the classroom that runs like a well-oiled machine, smoothly, flawlessly, functioning at full capacity, producing maximum output.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1850, The Knickerbocker; or, New-York monthly magazine, \"Editor's Table\", p. 573",
          "text": "The writer is never enthusiastic and rarely Imaginative. His lines flow with the smoothness of a well-oiled machine."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something that operates capably through the effective coordination of many parts."
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "well-oiled machine"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (1d5a7d1 and 304864d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.