mainspring :

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mainspring


  • n  the most important spring in a mechanical device (especially a clock or watch); as it uncoils it drives the mechanism

  • They carried on somehow, but the mainspring was gone.
  • The interplay between the two women is the play's mainspring.
  • Like a watch without a mainspring, it lacked the all-important power needed to start it up again : the power locked up in coal.
News & Articles

  • Bank of America employees volunteer for a cause
    On June 20, Bank of America employees volunteered at Father Bill’s in Quincy. Attendees first took a tour of the facility and then played an integral part in helping to both prepare and serve that evening’s meal. Father Bill’s and MainSpring is dedicated to ending and preventing homelessness as the leading provider to emergency shelter, housing, and supportive services on the South Shore and in ...
    June 30, 2013 - Mansfield News
Quotes

  • Albert Einstein in Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription)
    Another time Albert Einstein stated: "The cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest mainspring of scientific research."
  • Ronald Reagan in Family Security Matters
    On January 27, 1983, declaring a National Day of Prayer, President Ronald Reagan stated: "Prayer is the mainspring of the American spirit, a fundamental tenet of our people since before the Republic was founded. A year before the Declaration of...
  • Simone de Beauvoir in American Daily
    Beauvoir, a sex-obsessed lesbian, wrote: "Not only does Sade:anticipate:the 'pansexuality' of Freud, but he also makes eroticism the mainspring of human behavior:He knew that the 'perversions' that are vulgarly regarded as moral monstrosities or...

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