- machines or machine systems collectively

- 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"

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).