machinery Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun machines or machine systems collectively
  2. noun a system of means and activities whereby a social institution functions
    • the complex machinery of negotiation
    • the machinery of command labored and brought forth an order

WordNet

Ma*chin"er*y noun
Etymology
From Machine: cf. F. machinerie.
Definitions
  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).

Webster 1913