A machine is a kind of tool, and we can see a particularly clear example of what “machine” adds to the genus “tool” in the word mower. A hundred years ago, a mower was the name of a person; now it is the name for a tool. Before this, there was a similar change in the meaning of thresher and reaper. The same is true (in America at least) of the word street sweeper. To see what machine adds to tool, one could ask why the primary meanings of these words changed.
What machine adds to “tool”
May 27, 2010 at 2:34 pm (Uncategorized)