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).
Hear it pronounced