Word.ws English Dictionary

inner workings

inner workings noun: the mechanisms that function internally to a system and are not outwardly visible.

Noun

inner workings pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) The mechanisms that function internally to a system and are not outwardly visible
    • Nobody really understands the inner workings of politics.
    • After more than 18 months in non-protected storage, they have needed significant patching and repair work to bodyshells and inner workings before they can enter service.2025 November 26, David Stubbings, “News: Rolling stock strategy 'will give clarity'”, in RAIL, number 1049, page 7

Questions about inner workings

What does inner workings mean?
Inner workings means the mechanisms that function internally to a system and are not outwardly visible.
What part of speech is inner workings?
Inner workings is a noun.

Words near inner workings in the dictionary

  1. inner trigrams
  2. inner tube
  3. inner tubes
  4. inner voice
  5. Inner West
  6. inner workings
  7. inner-city
  8. inner-directed
  9. inner-platform effect
  10. inner-platform effects
  11. inner-source

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: inner workings (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-inner workings.wav.

Cite this entry: “inner workings.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/inner_workings. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.