Definition of "threshing-machine" [threshing-machine]

• In agriculture, a steam-, water-, or horse-power machine which in its most complete form beats the grain from the ears of cereals, separates the grain from the straw, and winnows it from the chaff. (noun)

The Century Dictionary (Public Domain)

• "He compared himself to a horse harnessed to a threshing-machine."
• "If a dairyman will feed his cows as a thresher feeds the cylinder of his threshing-machine, he will find that the milk will flow from the one about as steadily as the grain falls from the other."
• "The ideal of industrial agriculture is to do away with the agricultural labourer altogether and to set a man who does odd jobs to tend a steam-plough or a threshing-machine."