Source : Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

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).

Source : WordNet®

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"