Other forms: machinations
A machination is a crafty scheme worked out in secret. The machinations of the court, endless machinations, political machination.
It is nearly always plural and always disapproving, since nobody describes their own plans that way. The Latin is a machine or contrivance, so the picture is of a plot built like a device.
1nounmachinationA crafty scheme worked out in secret.
“The novel turns on the machinations of a single clerk.”
machination is a scheme.
Latin machinatio comes from machinari, to contrive, from machina, a device or engine.
Proto-Indo-European
*megʰ-
Latin
machinatio
Middle French
machination
Middle English
machynacion,machynacyon
English, today
machination
Built from
From Middle English machynacion,machynacyon, from Middle French machination and directly Latin machinatio, from māchinor (“devise, invent”). by surface analysis, machinate + -ion or machine + -ation.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA