mechanical routine
1
4.0
- noun
- After years of doing the same job, he fell into a mechanical routine that left him feeling uninspired.
Examples
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They are able to use critical reflection to break out of the mechanical routine of making decisions based on intuition, impulse, tradition, and authority.
Academic text (1996) -
Specifically, it is said that the five-paragraph formula forces students to conform to a mechanical routine that chokes the life out of writing, encouraging them not to wrestle with ideas but to conform to a one-size-fits-all straitjacket.
Academic text (2008) -
She followed a mechanical routine every morning, automatically going through the same set of actions without thinking.
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Many people find it hard to break the mechanical routine of their daily tasks, often repeating the same steps each day.
Synonyms
667
1.0
A regular action you do often without thinking
333
1.0
A regular way of doing things
1
2.3
A daily pattern of plain unexciting activities like work and chores
How Automatic
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a set of actions performed automatically' is directly derivable from combining 'mechanical' (machine-like, automatic) with 'routine' (habitual set of actions); the adjective simply modifies the routine to indicate lack of thought. This compositional relationship follows common adjective+noun semantics and is likely obvious to a B1 learner who knows both constituents and similar constructions in other languages.
Etymology
Mechanical routine comes from the picture of a machine doing the same steps again and again: mechanical means 'like a machine' and routine means a set of fixed actions. Because a machine repeats without thought, the phrase now means doing things 'without thinking'.