Industrial means to do with factories and making things in large quantities. Chimneys, loading bays, machines that run all night, an estate of grey units on the edge of town.
It sits in front of a long list of nouns: industrial waste, industrial output, industrial machinery, an industrial estate, the industrial north. With capital letters, the Industrial Revolution names the period when Britain moved from fields to factories. Industrial also means heavy-duty rather than domestic — an industrial oven, industrial cleaner, industrial quantities of coffee. In Britain, industrial action is the polite phrase for a strike or a work-to-rule. The trap here is industrious, which looks almost the same and means hard-working: an industrious student has nothing to do with factories.
1adjectiveindustrialTo do with factories and the making of goods.
“The town's industrial past is still visible in the old mills.”
2adjectiveheavyMade for heavy or large-scale use rather than for the home.
“The kitchen has an industrial dishwasher that does a hundred plates at a time.”
3adjectivecountry(of a country or region) having a great deal of industry.
“The industrial north grew fast in the nineteenth century.”
Industrial came into English from French industriel, built on industry. The noun landed first and the adjective was made from it, so industrial always points back at the thing it names — industry, the business of making things. Everything else in the family, from industrialise to industrialist, was assembled afterwards on top of that one short French borrowing.
French
industriel
English, today
industrial
From French industriel. by surface analysis, industry + -al.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA