Ma*chin"er*y (?), n. [From Machine: cf. F. machinerie.]
Machines, in general, or collectively.
The working parts of a machine, engine, or instrument; as, the machinery of a watch.
The supernatural means by which the action of a poetic or fictitious work is carried on and brought to a catastrophe; in an extended sense, the contrivances by which the crises and conclusion of a fictitious narrative, in prose or verse, are effected.
The machinery, madam, is a term invented by the critics, to signify that part which the deities, angels, or demons, are made to act in a poem.
The means and appliances by which anything is kept in action or a desired result is obtained; a complex system of parts adapted to a purpose.
An indispensable part of the machinery of state.
The delicate inflexional machinery of the Aryan languages.
I. Taylor (The Alphabet).
© Webster 1913.