The difference is this: a market economy is a tool--a valuable tool--for organizing productive activity.
“This tool is extremely valuable as CBP seeks to identify and detect changing smuggling patterns,” she said.
The nude of the 19th century was often a tool for anatomical study: an intellectualized and idealized approach to physiognomy.
Reading is not an activity or an experience but simply a tool.
As a tool for historians, presidential autobiographies are usually much less valuable than personal papers or correspondence.
Every principle of science, every deduction of philosophy, is a tool.
The old rascal had him in his power then, and made a tool of him in this business.
Naturally, the tool equipment for each particular job must be changed somewhat to suit the conditions governing each case.
A hand came fumbling to his in the dark and gave him the tool.
The final operation is that of finishing the bore by tool J and cutting a groove in the outside of the hub by the bent tool K.
Old English tol "instrument, implement," from Proto-Germanic *tolan (cf. Old Norse tol), from a verb stem represented by Old English tawian "prepare." The ending is the instrumental suffix -l (e.g. shovel). Figurative sense of "person used by another for his own ends" is recorded from 1660s. Slang meaning "penis" first recorded 1550s.
"to drive a vehicle," 1812, probably from tool (n.). The meaning "to work or shape with a tool" is recorded from 1815; that of "equip (a factory) with machine tools" is from 1927. Related: Tooled; tooling.
noun
verb
[underworld sense perhaps fr the practice of using a small boy as a sort of tool in pickpocketing, or perhaps fr Romany tool, ''handle, take''; second verb sense fr earlier tool, ''a whip'']
1.
2. A Unix application program with a simple, "transparent" (typically text-stream) interface designed specifically to be used in programmed combination with other tools (see filter, plumbing).
3.
4.
[Jargon File]
(1996-12-12)
