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industry.

The tendency to work persistently.

8 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈɪn.də.stɹi/General-American, Received-Pronunciation
  1. The tendency to work persistently.

    uncountable
    Over the years, their industry and business sense made them wealthy.
  2. Businesses of the same type, considered as a whole; trade.

    countable
    The software and tourism industries continue to grow, while the steel industry remains troubled.
    The steel industry has long used blast furnaces to smelt iron.
  3. Businesses that produce goods as opposed to services.

    uncountable
  4. The sector of the economy consisting of large-scale enterprises.

    countable · singular · uncountable
    There used to be a lot of industry around here, but now the economy depends on tourism.
  5. Automated production of material goods.

    Europe · countable · uncountable
  6. A typological classification of stone tools, associated with a technocomplex.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Middle English industry, industrie, from Old French industrie, from Latin industria (“diligence, activity, industry”), from industrius (“diligent, active, zealous”), from Old Latin indostruus (“diligent, active”); origin unknown. Perhaps from indu (“in”) + ūst-, ūstr-, stem of ūrō (“burn, burn up, consume”, verb), related to Old High German ūstrī (“industry”), Old English andūstrian (“to hate, detest”, literally “to be consumed with zeal”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.