machinery

Definition

The machines constituting a production apparatus, in a plant etc., collectively.

Etymology

From machine + -ery. Compare French machinerie.

Example Sentences

• "The external aspect of the oficina was not unlike that of a north-country coal or iron mine—tall chimneys and machinery, corrugated iron buildings, offices and houses, the shanties of workmen, a high bank of refuse."
• "One or two wondered then, as if suddenly recalling the outlander, how he would manage, or if he would perish, up there among his unholy modern machineries that puffed out frozen steam to store the deer meat and shot fowl for him, […] "And there were big boxes lugged up there, done up in iron clasps. Cruel-cold earth in those." […] "Like corpse boxes," someone else suggested, down in the half-light, snug fust of the village drinking shop."
• "All Mr. Yeats's grotesque machinery of sowlths and tevishes and sheogues leaves us without a shudder; his fantasies are stage-properties of the most unillusive kind."