contrivance

plural contrivances

1. A (mechanical) device to perform a certain task.

   Synonyms: contraption

2. A means, such as an elaborate plan or strategy, to accomplish a certain objective.

   And along with each of these go their images, not the things themselves, — they too have come about by godlike contrivance.

   2005, Plato, translated by Lesley Brown, Sophist, page 266b

   1 more example

   I mean to give something as slight and inexpensive as possible; but I have been so long out of the way of these things, that I am really quite at a loss, and must throw myself on your kindness, as I hope you will be with me, and also Mr. and Mrs. Gooch. You must arrange in such a manner as not to blush for your own contrivances.

   1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVI, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 208

3. Something overly artful or artificial.

   The retrospective emphasis on these two specific stories—even their mention here, in the previous paragraph—has become a contrivance.

   2022, Chuck Klosterman, The Nineties, New York: Penguin Press, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   When the stamens of a flower suddenly spring towards the pistil, or slowly move one after the other towards it, the contrivance seems adapted solely to ensure self-fertilisation; and no doubt it is useful for this end: but, the agency of insects is often required to cause the stamens to spring forward, as Kölreuter has shown to be the case with the barberry; and curiously in this very genus, which seems to have a special contrivance for self-fertilisation, it is well known that if very closely-allied forms or varieties are planted near each other, it is hardly possible to raise pure seedlings, so largely do they naturally cross.

   1859 November 24, Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, […], London: John Murray, […], →OCLC

   The Harry Hamlin character is a bit of a hypochondriac, a contrivance that exists for the sole purpose of bringing him into contact with the confused young doctor at the clinic.

   1982 February 13, Walta Borawski, “A Moonlight Walk in a Crimeless Park”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 29, page 7

4. The making of cunning or deceitful plans

   Synonyms: scheming, engineering