Noun
(computing theory) Ellipsis of finite-state machine..
This algorithm will produce a state machine for parsing a given context-free grammar.
(Marxism) The state machinery; state apparatus.
Source: en.wiktionary.orgA Computer is a state machine. Threads are for people who can't program state machines. Alan Cox
Nothing struck me so much in the war as the disappearance of the individual, of the human being... I saw what the State machine was, that it destroyed the individual, absorbed him to itself, and I said, "Give me Liberty." David Lloyd George