Meaning & use
machine-made
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Meaning
adjectivecomparable
Produced by a machine or factory process rather than by hand.
Grammar: Used before a noun or after a verb: a machine-made rug, the rug is machine made.
Patterns
- machine-made goods
- machine-made by someone
The shop sells machine-made rugs at half the price of hand-knotted ones.
These machine-made tiles are all perfectly identical.
Most of the bread on the shelf is machine made.
Common combinations
- machine-made goods
- Machine-made goods are usually cheaper than handmade ones.
- machine-made carpet
- A machine-made carpet can look very similar to a hand-woven one.
- machine-made paper
- Most machine-made paper is produced in huge rolls.
- machine-made lace
- The machine-made lace was sold by the meter.
- machine-made products
- Machine-made products are more uniform.
Synonyms and how they differ
- factory-made
- Factory-made stresses the place of production, while machine-made stresses the method.
- manufactured
- Manufactured is a wider word for anything produced industrially, and sounds more formal.
- mass-produced
- Mass-produced stresses large numbers made quickly, which machine-made does not necessarily imply.
- mechanically produced
- Mechanically produced is formal and technical, whereas machine-made is plain everyday wording.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: machine-made or man-made?
machine-made vs man-made
Man-made means created by people rather than occurring in nature, so it can include things made by hand, while machine-made means made using machines.
Practice
A shop labels two scarves: one is hand-knitted and the other is machine-made. What is the main difference?
Choose one answer.
Machine-made means produced by a machine, not by hand. It does not automatically mean lower quality, and it is not natural.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “machine-made”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.