tooling

American  

[too-ling] / ˈtu lɪŋ /

noun

1. work done with a tool or tools; tooled ornamentation, as on wood, stone, or leather.

2. Machinery.

   1. a number of tools, as in a particular factory.

   2. the planning and arrangement of tools for a particular manufacturing process.

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tooling British  

/ ˈtuːlɪŋ /

noun

1. any decorative work done with a tool, esp a design stamped onto a book cover, piece of leatherwork, etc

2. the selection, provision, and setting up of tools, esp for a machining operation

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Etymology

Origin of tooling

First recorded in 1665–75; tool + -ing ¹

Example Sentences

The better the technical tooling, in this case AI agents, the smaller the human teams need to be, said Deepak Singh, a vice president at Amazon Web Services.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 18, 2026

“The company sits at multiple control points across the enterprise estate—cloud infrastructure, productivity software, developer tooling and security — which should allow it to shape enterprise AI adoption rather than respond to it,” Jader wrote.

From Barron's • Mar. 23, 2026

Prompts are becoming a core part of financial tooling.

From MarketWatch • Feb. 25, 2026

Arsenal-1 will use a common set of commercial manufacturing tooling, machinery, and processes for every type of autonomous vehicle that Anduril produces, the company said.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 22, 2026

It was November 1982, and I was tooling down Virginia State Route 460 in my green 1972 Volkswagen at four A.M.

From "The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother" by James McBride

Related Words

• color
• design
• finery
• ornament
• plaque
• ribbon
• trinket
• wreath