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).