a cog in a/the machine

cog | American Dictionary

cog
noun[ C ]
us/kɑɡ/
a part shaped like a tooth around the edge of a wheel in a machine that fits between those on a similar wheel, causing both wheels to move

Examples of cog

cog
The unsolved problem here is to explain exceptions such as cog (always with the lax vowel) and dog (always with the tense vowel).
Everything fell into place, the cogs meshed, and the thing really seemed to be a machine which in a moment would run of itself.
That the capacity exists is enough to suggest that the error theory of morality is an unnecessary cog in evolutionary human psychology.
These soldier captives were cogs in a war machine.
Macromolecules can be thought of as ' cogs in the machine ' in which pathways and networks are the result of the availability of substrates.
Pieter comes across as simply one more cog in the relentlessly grinding colonial machine.
Far from being elders, matriarchs and patriarchs, important cogs in the wheel of the family, old people began to be perceived as social problems.
A collective commitment to acknowledging responsibility, feeling guilt, and making collective reparation should not, however, mean the condemnation of individuals who have truly been cogs in the wheel.
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