Definition of "industry" []

• Commercial production and sale of goods. (noun)
• A specific branch of manufacture and trade: the textile industry. See Synonyms at business. (noun)
• The sector of an economy made up of manufacturing enterprises: government regulation of industry. (noun)
• Industrial management. (noun)
• Energetic devotion to a task or an endeavor; diligence: demonstrated great intelligence and industry as a prosecutor. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "They all sink into the lowest class of religions mendicants, or retainers; or live among their friends as drones upon the land; while the manufacturing, trading, and commercial industry that provided them with the comforts, conveniences, and elegancies of life while they were in a higher grade of service is in its turn thrown out of employment; and the whole frame of society becomes, for a time, deranged by the local diminution in the demand _for the services of men and the produce of their industry_."
• "The very word industry comes from the Middle English word industrie, or skill, and from the Latin industria, or diligence."
• "The very word "industry" comes from the Middle English word "industrie", or skill, and from the Latin "industria", or diligence."