assembly

From Middle English assemblee, from Anglo-Norman asemblee (Old French asemblee, French assemblée).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /əˈsɛmb.lɪ/
• (US) IPA^(key): /əˈsɛmb.li/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

assembly (countable and uncountable, plural assemblies)

1. A set of pieces that work together in unison as a mechanism or device.
   • 1980 December 6, Nancy Walker, “Toodle-Oo, Doodle”, in Gay Community News, volume 8, number 20, page 12:

     Sheets of water poured over the car, making visibility all but nil. Suddenly the windshield wiper, not just the blade but the entire assembly, blew off.

   In order to change the bearing, you must first remove the gearbox assembly.

2. The act of putting together a set of pieces, fragments, or elements.

   instructions for assembly

   assembly line

   • 1961 October, “New Metropolitan Line train sets enter service”, in Trains Illustrated, page 622:

     The bogies are built up of welded sub-units which are stress-relieved before assembly by riveting.

3. A congregation of people in one place for a purpose.

   school assembly

   freedom of assembly

   • 1732, George Reynolds, A diſſertation: or, Inquiry Concerning the Canonical Autority of the Goſpel according to Mathew; […] ‎, 2nd edition, page 4:

     In a word, they were made uſe of by the immediate ſucceſſors of the Apoſtles, and many of them read in the Public Aſſemblies of Chriſtians, as Canonical Scripture, without the leaſt mark of Diſtinction, in point of Autority […]

   • 1909, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], “A Court Ball”, in The Squire’s Daughter, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, published 1919, →OCLC, page 9:

     They stayed together during three dances, went out on to the terrace, explored wherever they were permitted to explore, paid two visits to the buffet, and enjoyed themselves much in the same way as if they had been school-children surreptitiously breaking loose from an assembly of grown-ups.

4. (politics) A legislative body.

   the General Assembly of the United Nations

   New York State Assembly

5. (military) A beat of the drum or sound of the bugle as a signal to troops to assemble.
6. (computing) Ellipsis of assembly language.
7. (computing, Microsoft .NET) A building block of an application, similar to a DLL, but containing both executable code and information normally found in a DLL's type library. The type library information in an assembly, called a manifest, describes public functions, data, classes, and version information.

• church (obsolete)
• (congregation of people): foregathering

• house of assembly
• jural assembly

Unadapted borrowing from English assembly.

assembly m (plural assemblies)

1. (computing) assembly language (programming language using mnemonics that correspond to processor instructions)

   Synonym: linguagem de montagem