How to Use mainspring in a Sentence

mainspring

noun

• Agriculture is the mainspring of their economy.
• The show’s mainspring and title song amounts to little more than a kvetch.
  — Lily Janiak, San Francisco Chronicle, 2 Apr. 2018
• In the Type 390, the movement is arranged so that the gear trains lie in layers, from right to left, with the mainspring at one end and the tourbillon at the other.
  — Bloomberg.com, 3 Apr. 2018
• In a conventional watch gear train, gears downstream in the power flow from the mainspring barrel turn more quickly than the gears that drive them.
  — Bloomberg.com, 3 Apr. 2018
• The mainspring of this imagined future clash is not race and slavery, but science and the environment.
  — The Washington Post, OregonLive.com, 30 May 2017
• The dial side also offers a peek at the open-worked barrel at 10 o’clock and the coiled mainspring, providing 72 hours of power reserve.
  — Paige Reddinger, Robb Report, 10 Apr. 2021
• Here was an opportunity to acquire and restore the old mainspring.
  — Gregory Thomas, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Aug. 2022
• Inside, there are two mainplates, each of which holds a movement consisting of a mainspring, a cylinder, a comb and regulator.
  — Roberta Naas, Forbes, 4 May 2022
• This paranoia was the mainspring for Nixon’s attack on the constitutional order.
  — Jeet Heer, New Republic, 26 Jan. 2018
• Her film’s ironies start with the title, because many of the movie’s viewers, like many of its interview subjects from the world of music, would rather not listen to Kenny G’s music at all—and their aversion is the mainspring of the film.
  — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 4 Dec. 2021
• To build the Reference, Patek adapted self-winding technology from its rival, Rolex: a new mechanism that spun around the mainspring instead of swinging back and forth.
  — Jonathon Keats, WIRED, 11 Nov. 2009
• An utterly absurd car chase and a fight ensue—so does a warm personal relationship between Emily and Youcef, which provides the mainspring of the movie’s drama.
  — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 11 Aug. 2022
• Between picturesque villages with draconian speed limits, the iX unwinds like a fine mainspring.
  — Dan Neil, WSJ, 1 Oct. 2021
• There have been many terrific magazines devoted to movies, but only one such magazine is both a mainspring of the history of the art form and an ongoing meme: Cahiers du Cinéma.
  — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 6 Mar. 2020
• The energy created by these thermal variations is connected to a mechanism that uses it to wind the mainspring.
  — Carol Besler, Robb Report, 13 Apr. 2022
• The piece is equipped with a constant force mechanism called a remontoire that controls the heartbeat of the watch, transferring power between the mainspring and escapement to ensure its stability in timekeeping.
  — Victoria Gomelsky, New York Times, 8 Mar. 2020
• Cartier has created a platinum automatic skeleton watch in which the rotor houses the entire movement—mainspring, escapement, and all.
  — Charles Curkin, ELLE Decor, 12 Apr. 2022
• Hatidze’s solitude is one of the film’s prime subjects and also its dramatic mainspring, and its details and practicalities are merely hinted at, and utterly unexplored, throughout.
  — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 1 Aug. 2019
• The Rolex Oyster Perpetual contained a kinetic semi-circular plate that utilized movement from the wearer’s arm to tension the mainspring, making manual winding unnecessary.
  — Kyle Roderick, Forbes, 22 June 2021
• His musical collaboration with Parks is the personal, passionate mainspring of that transformation.
  — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 26 Apr. 2022
• Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.
  — Matthew De Silva, Quartz, 26 Sep. 2019

Last Updated: 5 Sep 2024