machinery

What it means

1. countableuncountableThe machines constituting a production apparatus, in a plant etc., collectively.

   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.

   2013, Norman A. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats

   2 more examples

   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.

   1890, William Howard Russell, “Iquique to the Pampas”, in A Visit to Chile and the Nitrate Fields of Tarapacá, Etc., London: J[ames] S[prent] Virtue & Co., […], page 171

   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.

   2013, Tanith Lee, “Their Monstrous Minds”, in Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling, editors, Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fantasy, New York, N.Y.: Tor Books, →ISBN

2. countableuncountableThe working parts of a machine as a group.
3. countableuncountableThe collective parts of something which allow it to function.

   All of the machinery of the law was brought to bear on the investigation.

   1 more example

   Since the three histone-fold domain amino acids are located at the surface of the α-helix 2 domain that is responsible for the formation of H3-H4 dimers and accessible in prenucleosomal complexes, it has been suggested that the specificity associated with these amino acid positions derives from interactions with different assembly or post-translational-modification machineries.

   2015 October 28, “Comparing the Assembly and Handedness Dynamics of (H3.3-H4) 2 Tetrasomes to Canonical Tetrasomes”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI

In a sentence

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.

1890, William Howard Russell, “Iquique to the Pampas”, in A Visit to Chile and the Nitrate Fields of Tarapacá, Etc., London: J[ames] S[prent] Virtue & Co., […], page 171

Where it comes from

From machine + -ery. Compare French machinerie.