Machinery

Machinery
Machinery Ma*chin"er*y, n. [From {Machine}: cf. F. machinerie.] 1. Machines, in general, or collectively. [1913 Webster]

2. The working parts of a machine, engine, or instrument; as, the machinery of a watch. [1913 Webster]

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. [1913 Webster]

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. [1913 Webster]

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. [1913 Webster]

An indispensable part of the machinery of state. --Macaulay. [1913 Webster]

The delicate inflexional machinery of the Aryan languages. --I. Taylor (The Alphabet). [1913 Webster]


The Collaborative International Dictionary of English. 2000.

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Synonyms:
, / (in poems)


Look at other dictionaries:

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