Definition of "spinning jenny" [spinning jenny]

• An early form of spinning machine having several spindles. (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.

• "Thus it was not without significance that when Dick Arkwright, the barber’s apprentice, made his fortune in the spinning jenny he metamorphosed into Sir Richard; the threat to England’s traditional reign of gentlemanliness was nicely solved by inducting such parvenus wholesale into the fraternity of gentle blood and manners."