| 1. | an assemblage of machines or mechanical apparatuses: the machinery of a factory. |
| 2. | the parts of a machine, collectively: the machinery of a watch. |
| 3. | a group of people or a system by which action is maintained or by which some result is obtained: the machinery of government. |
| 4. | a group of contrivances for producing stage effects. |
| 5. | the group or aggregate of literary machines, esp. those of supernatural agency (epic machinery) in an epic poem. |