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
  • Rotating the watch to view the various pods also winds the mainspring.
    — Carol Besler, Robb Report, 23 Oct. 2024
  • The watch is powered by a mainspring just like a mechanical watch and has a very similar gear train.
    — David Flett, Robb Report, 16 Oct. 2024
  • The movement has double barrels, stacked with four mainsprings, for a 72-hour power reserve.
    — Carol Besler, Robb Report, 2 Dec. 2025
  • Here was an opportunity to acquire and restore the old mainspring.
    — Gregory Thomas, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Aug. 2022
  • 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
  • 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
  • Between picturesque villages with draconian speed limits, the iX unwinds like a fine mainspring.
    — Dan Neil, WSJ, 1 Oct. 2021
  • In addition, its bi-directional pawl winding system builds up a power reserve of 46 hours in the mainspring.
    — Cait Bazemore, Robb Report, 3 May 2023
  • The interstellar military conflict is the mainspring of the story, and a link in what is intended to be an ongoing series.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 16 Dec. 2022
  • 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
  • This undying, uninterrupted devotion to their fanbase is, perhaps, the mainspring of the band’s success.
    — Spin Contributor, SPIN, 27 Mar. 2024
  • 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
  • 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
  • The tourbillon cage is framed by a thin bridge which secures the going train at the left, linking the regulating organ to the hour and minute display at the top of the dial, with the mainspring directly underneath.
    — Blake Buettner, Robb Report, 8 May 2024
  • 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
  • The mainspring barrel was redesigned, and Jaeger replaced some key components with silicon parts, which makes energy transmission smoother by reducing friction when the watch is running.
    — Carol Besler, Robb Report, 11 Jan. 2024
  • 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 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
  • 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
  • His musical collaboration with Parks is the personal, passionate mainspring of that transformation.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 26 Apr. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'mainspring.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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