engine

engine (ˈɛndʒɪn)
—n
1.	any machine designed to convert energy, esp heat energy, into mechanical work: a steam engine; a petrol engine
2.	a.  a railway locomotive
	b.  (as modifier): the engine cab
3.	military any of various pieces of equipment formerly used in warfare, such as a battering ram or gun
4.	obsolete any instrument or device: engines of torture
[C13: from Old French engin, from Latin ingenium nature, talent, ingenious contrivance, from in-² + -genium, related to gignere to beget, produce]

engine
EXPAND

18c., especially of steam engines.

COLLAPSE

engine   (ěn'jĭn)  Pronunciation Key  A machine that turns energy into mechanical force or motion, especially one that gets its energy from a source of heat, such as the burning of a fuel. The efficiency of an engine is the ratio between the kinetic energy produced by the machine and the energy needed to produce it. See more at internal-combustion engine, steam engine., See also motor.

engine definition

jargon
1. A piece of hardware that encapsulates some function but can't be used without some kind of front end. Today we have, especially, "print engine": the guts of a laser printer.
2. An analogous piece of software; notionally, one that does a lot of noisy crunching, such as a "database engine", or "search engine".
The hackish senses of "engine" are actually close to its original, pre-Industrial-Revolution sense of a skill, clever device, or instrument (the word is cognate to "ingenuity"). This sense had not been completely eclipsed by the modern connotation of power-transducing machinery in Charles Babbage's time, which explains why he named the stored-program computer that he designed in 1844 the "Analytical Engine".
[Jargon File]
(1996-05-31)