Ma*chin"er*y (?), n. [From
Machine: cf. F. machinerie.] 1.
Machines, in general, or collectively.
2. The working parts of a machine, engine, or
instrument; as, the machinery of a watch.
3. 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.
Pope.
4. 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.
Macaulay.
The delicate inflexional machinery of the Aryan
languages.
I. Taylor (The Alphabet).