different between industry vs elbowgrease

English

Etymology

From Middle English industry, industrie, from Old French industrie, from Latin industria (“diligence, activity, industry”), from industrius (“diligent, active, zealous”), from Old Latin indostruus (“diligent, active”); origin unknown. Perhaps from indu (“in”) + ?st-, ?str-, stem of ?r? (“burn, burn up, consume”, verb), related to Old High German ?str? (“industry”), Old English and?strian (“to hate, detest”, literally “to be consumed with zeal”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??nd?st?i/, /??nd?stri/
• Hyphenation: in?dus?try

Noun

industry (countable and uncountable, plural industries)

1. (uncountable) The tendency to work persistently. Diligence.
   • 1941, Ogden Nash, "The Ant", in The Face is Familiar, Garden City Publishing Company, page 224.

     The ant has made himself illustrious / Through constant industry industrious. / So what? / Would you be calm and placid / If you were full of formic acid?

2. (countable, business, economics) Businesses of the same type, considered as a whole. Trade.
   • 2012, Christoper Zara, Tortured Artists: From Picasso and Monroe to Warhol and Winehouse, the Twisted Secrets of the World's Most Creative Minds, part 1, chapter 2, 51:

     Long before popular music evolved its many genres and subgenres, the industry was driven by a simple one-size-fits-all philosophy uncomplicated by impassioned debates over the origins of trip hop or the difference between deatchore and screamo.

3. (uncountable, economics) Businesses that produce goods as opposed to services.
4. (in the singular, economics) The sector of the economy consisting of large-scale enterprises.

5. (European software patent law) Automated production of material goods.
6. (archaeology) A typological classification of stone tools, associated with a technocomplex.

Synonyms

• (tendency to work persistently): diligence; application
• (businesses of the same type): sector; field
• (businesses that produce goods): manufacturing

Derived terms

Related terms

• industrial
• industrious

Translations

References

Further reading

• industry in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• industry in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• industry at OneLook Dictionary Search
• "industry" in Raymond Williams, Keywords (revised), 1983, Fontana Press, page 165.