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machinery |
2 definitions found From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]: Machinery \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). From WordNet r 1.6 [wn]: machinery n 1: machines or machine systems collectively 2: 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"
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