\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).