(n.) The principal or most important spring in a piece of mechanism, especially the moving spring of a watch or clock or the spring in a gunlock which impels the hammer. Hence: The chief or most powerful motive; the efficient cause of action.
Example Sentences:
(1) And this is the mainspring of so many of his stories, novellas, and his one novel, Beware of Pity : the clash between propriety and desire.
(2) Research workers should apply themselves to avoiding this progress in human behavior to be associated with the development of "anti-science" reactions, leading to guilty feelings about the mainspring of their activity.
(3) Although many of his commanding officers found him impossible to deal with, General Sir Edmund Allenby said he should be given a free hand: “He was the mainspring of the Arab movement and knew their language, their manners and their mentality.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest The book room at Clouds Hill, showing the reading chair and fireplace.
(4) We try to demonstrate that the similarity in opinion that H. Marcuse assumed about the significance of a sexual economy can only be a superficial one, especially as it relates to sublimation as a mainspring of civilization.
(5) Sex loomed large in many of them since he felt it was the mainspring of most things, and generally covered or tidied up by latterday English hypocrisy.
Spring
Definition:
(v. i.) To leap; to bound; to jump.
(v. i.) To issue with speed and violence; to move with activity; to dart; to shoot.
(v. i.) To start or rise suddenly, as from a covert.
(v. i.) To fly back; as, a bow, when bent, springs back by its elastic power.
(v. i.) To bend from a straight direction or plane surface; to become warped; as, a piece of timber, or a plank, sometimes springs in seasoning.
(v. i.) To shoot up, out, or forth; to come to the light; to begin to appear; to emerge; as a plant from its seed, as streams from their source, and the like; -often followed by up, forth, or out.
(v. i.) To issue or proceed, as from a parent or ancestor; to result, as from a cause, motive, reason, or principle.
(v. i.) To grow; to prosper.
(v. t.) To cause to spring up; to start or rouse, as game; to cause to rise from the earth, or from a covert; as, to spring a pheasant.
(v. t.) To produce or disclose suddenly or unexpectedly.
(v. t.) To cause to explode; as, to spring a mine.
(v. t.) To crack or split; to bend or strain so as to weaken; as, to spring a mast or a yard.
(v. t.) To cause to close suddenly, as the parts of a trap operated by a spring; as, to spring a trap.
(v. t.) To bend by force, as something stiff or strong; to force or put by bending, as a beam into its sockets, and allowing it to straighten when in place; -- often with in, out, etc.; as, to spring in a slat or a bar.
(v. t.) To pass over by leaping; as, to spring a fence.
(v. i.) A leap; a bound; a jump.
(v. i.) A flying back; the resilience of a body recovering its former state by elasticity; as, the spring of a bow.
(v. i.) Elastic power or force.
(v. i.) An elastic body of any kind, as steel, India rubber, tough wood, or compressed air, used for various mechanical purposes, as receiving and imparting power, diminishing concussion, regulating motion, measuring weight or other force.
(v. i.) Any source of supply; especially, the source from which a stream proceeds; as issue of water from the earth; a natural fountain.
(v. i.) Any active power; that by which action, or motion, is produced or propagated; cause; origin; motive.
(v. i.) That which springs, or is originated, from a source;
(v. i.) A race; lineage.
(v. i.) A youth; a springal.
(v. i.) A shoot; a plant; a young tree; also, a grove of trees; woodland.
(v. i.) That which causes one to spring; specifically, a lively tune.
(v. i.) The season of the year when plants begin to vegetate and grow; the vernal season, usually comprehending the months of March, April, and May, in the middle latitudes north of the equator.
(v. i.) The time of growth and progress; early portion; first stage.
(v. i.) A crack or fissure in a mast or yard, running obliquely or transversely.
(v. i.) A line led from a vessel's quarter to her cable so that by tightening or slacking it she can be made to lie in any desired position; a line led diagonally from the bow or stern of a vessel to some point upon the wharf to which she is moored.
Example Sentences:
(1) Historical analysis shows that institutions and special education services spring from common, although not identical, societal and philosophical forces.
(2) Core biopsy with computed tomography (CT) or ultrasound (US) guidance may be such an alternative, particularly when a spring-loaded firing device is used.
(3) Considerate touches includes the free use of cruiser bicycles (the best method of tackling the Palm Springs main drag), home-baked cookies … and if you'd like to get married, ask the manager: he's a minister.
(4) Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, 1983, pp.
(5) The anthropometric data of women in the spring and autumn group were similar.
(6) Despite Facebook's size and reach, and its much-vaunted role in the short-lived Arab spring , there are reasons for thinking that Twitter may be the more important service for the future of the public sphere – that is, the space in which democracies conduct public discussion.
(7) The phage is also thermostable in water of the hot spring from which this phage was isolated.
(8) In Humbo in Ethiopia , FMNR has re-greened 2,800 hectares: springs, dry for 30 years, are flowing again.
(9) The first is that the supposed exaggerated winter birthrate among process schizophrenics actually represents a reduction in spring-fall births caused by prenatal exposure to infectious diseases during the preceding winter--i.e., a high prenatal death rate in process preschizophrenic fetuses.
(10) For the attachment of adherent cells, microcarriers or wire springs can be applied to increase the internal surface of the bioreactor.
(11) The Duke of Gloucester will go to the British Virgin Islands and Malta, while the Falkland Islands – where Prince William will be serving briefly as a helicopter pilot in the spring – will receive an official visit from the Duke of Kent, who will also go to Uganda.
(12) The curved configuration of the cervico-thoracic vertebral column embedded in long spring-like muscles is interpreted to function as a shock absorber.
(13) However, in late fall, winter and early spring AC is not really necessary.
(14) As soon as you close down one company, another one will spring up in its place," she said.
(15) Differences between F3 or F4 and WP were lower in autumn than in spring.
(16) Such a heterogeneity in DNA content in the diploid part of HPR cell population could apparently suggest some differences in the nuclear chromatin arrangement to be always higher in spring before the frog spawning, and it seems to be characteristic of this type of cells.
(17) Statistical analysis has shown the following: a) the growth inhibition, which is especially distinct in autumn-spring generation, takes place in the Ist instar larvae 1.76-2.20 mm long inhabiting the walls of the nasal cavity and concha (their average body length at hatching is 1.08 plus or minus 0.004 mm); the inhibition is associated with interpopulation relations and apparently does not depend on the date of its beginning and can last from 6 to 7 months; c) after the growth resumption the development continues uninterruptedly up to the moulting; the inhibition is also possible at the beginning of the 2nd instar and then the development proceeds without any intervals up to the complete maturation of larvae.
(18) The doses were calculated as average monthly doses for each of 454 municipalities during 36 consecutive months after the accident in spring 1986.
(19) Like, I am well, well equipped for this thing.” For their one survival item each, Rogen brought a role of toilet paper, while Franco brought sunglasses and mugs continually for the camera, giving his best Spring Breakers faces while in the buff.
(20) As corruption consistently ranks as a top concern for Spaniards, second only to unemployment, and with an eye on upcoming municipal and regional elections in the spring, Spain’s political parties have been keen to appear as if they are tackling the issue.