industry

Etymology

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”).

noun

1. (uncountable) The tendency to work persistently. Diligence.
   Over the years, their industry and business sense made them wealthy.
   The ant has made himself illustrious / Through constant industry industrious. / So what? / Would you be calm and placid / If you were full of formic acid? 1941, Ogden Nash, “The Ant”, in The Face is Familiar, Garden City Publishing Company, page 224
   England's win was built on industry and discipline, epitomised by the performances of Manchester City's Joleon Lescott in defence and Scott Parker in midfield. November 12, 2011, “International friendly: England 1-0 Spain”, in BBC Sport
2. (countable, business, economics) Businesses of the same type, considered as a whole. Trade.
   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.
   Long before popular music evolved its many genres and subgenres, the industry was driven by a simple one-size-fits-all philosophy uncomplicated by impassioned debates over the origins of trip hop or the difference between deatchore and screamo. 2012, Christoper Zara, Tortured Artists: From Picasso and Monroe to Warhol and Winehouse, the Twisted Secrets of the World's Most Creative Minds, part 1, chapter 2, 51
   Finance is seldom romantic. But the idea of peer-to-peer lending comes close. This is an industry that brings together individual savers and lenders on online platforms. Those that want to borrow are matched with those that want to lend. 2013-06-01, “End of the peer show”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 71
3. (uncountable, economics) Businesses that produce goods as opposed to services.
   But through the oligopoly, charcoal fuel proliferated throughout London's trades and industries. By the 1200s, brewers and bakers, tilemakers, glassblowers, pottery producers, and a range of other craftsmen all became hour-to-hour consumers of charcoal. 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion
4. (in the singular, economics) The sector of the economy consisting of large-scale enterprises.
   There used to be a lot of industry around here, but now the economy depends on tourism.
   [Rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity. Nor is solar power yet as cheap as the grid. For all that, the rapid arrival of electric light to Indian villages is long overdue. When the national grid suffers its next huge outage, as it did in July 2012 when hundreds of millions were left in the dark, look for specks of light in the villages. 2013-07-20, “Out of the gloom”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845
5. (European software patent law) Automated production of material goods.
   It is a classical and restricted view both of industry (it excludes service sectors, now 70% of the GDP of developed economies)[…] 2007, Dominique Guellec, Bruno van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, The economics of the European patent system, page 122
6. (archaeology) A typological classification of stone tools, associated with a technocomplex.