contrivance

From contrive +‎ -ance.

• IPA^(key): /kənˈtɹaɪ.vəns/

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contrivance (plural contrivances)

1. A (mechanical) device to perform a certain task; contraption.
2. A means, such as an elaborate plan or strategy, to accomplish a certain objective.
   • 1838 (date written), L E L, chapter XVI, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. , volume I, London: Henry Colburn, , published 1842, →OCLC, page 208:

     I mean to give something as slight and inexpensive as possible; but I have been so long out of the way of these things, that I am really quite at a loss, and must throw myself on your kindness, as I hope you will be with me, and also Mr. and Mrs. Gooch. You must arrange in such a manner as not to blush for your own contrivances.

   • 1982 February 13, Walta Borawski, “A Moonlight Walk in a Crimeless Park”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 29, page 7:

     The Harry Hamlin character is a bit of a hypochondriac, a contrivance that exists for the sole purpose of bringing him into contact with the confused young doctor at the clinic.

   • 2005, Plato, translated by Lesley Brown, Sophist, page 266b:

     And along with each of these go their images, not the things themselves, — they too have come about by godlike contrivance.

3. Something overly artful or artificial.
   • 1859, Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species:

     When the stamens of a flower suddenly spring towards the pistil, or slowly move one after the other towards it, the contrivance seems adapted solely to ensure self-fertilisation; and no doubt it is useful for this end: but, the agency of insects is often required to cause the stamens to spring forward, as Kölreuter has shown to be the case with the barberry; and curiously in this very genus, which seems to have a special contrivance for self-fertilisation, it is well known that if very closely-allied forms or varieties are planted near each other, it is hardly possible to raise pure seedlings, so largely do they naturally cross.

• contraption

• contrive

• “contrivance”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E Smith, editors (1911), “contrivance”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.