# factory
## English
### Etymology

From factor +‎ y. Compare Middle French factorie; Spanish factoría, Portuguese feitoria, Dutch factorij.

### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈfæk.tə.ɹi/, /ˈfæk.tɹi/
** Audio (London):(file)
* (General American) IPA: /ˈfæk.tɚ.i/, /ˈfæk.tɹi/
* Rhymes: -æktəɹi, -æktɹi

### Noun

factory (plural factories)
* (chiefly Scotland, now rare) The position or state of being a factor. [from 16th c.]
* (historical) A trading establishment, especially set up by merchants working in a foreign country. [from 16th c.]
** 1792, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p. 184:
    We had here his curate, Mr. Furley, who had been nine years chaplain to the English factory at St. Petersburg […] .
* A building or other place where manufacturing takes place. [from 17th c.]
** 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:[…] St. Bede's at this period of its history was perhaps the poorest and most miserable parish in the East End of London. Close-packed, crushed by the buttressed height of the railway viaduct, rendered airless by huge walls of factories, it at once banished lively interest from a stranger's mind and left only a dull oppression of the spirit.
** 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:The highway to the East Coast which ran through the borough of Ebbfield had always been a main road and even now, despite the vast garages, the pylons and the gaily painted factory glasshouses which had sprung up beside it, there still remained an occasional trace of past cultures.
    Synonym: manufactory
    History has shown that, even without cheap labor, factories run perfectly well.
* (UK, slang) A police station. [from 19th c.]
** 2010, Harry Keeble, Kris Hollington, Crack House:The guys all knew each other and we were having a jolly old chinwag as we marched them out of the house in front of their stunned neighbours and into a van we had called to take them all to the Factory (police station).
* A device or process that produces or manufactures something.
** 2009, Sam Riley, Star Struck: An Encyclopedia of Celebrity Culture, page 200:Radio became a star factory for journalists.
* A factory farm.
    chicken factory; pig factory
* (programming) In a computer program or library, a function, method, etc. which creates an object.
** 2010, Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi, William Bartholomew, Inside the Microsoft Build Engine:The task factory […] is the object that is responsible for creating instances of those tasks dynamically.
* (attributive) The original state of an electronic device, as it was when it came from the manufacturer.
    factory settings; factory defaults; a factory reset

#### Hyponyms

* (trading establishment): fondaco; see also trading post, colony

#### Derived terms

* abstract factory class
* abstract factory pattern
* antifactory
* arms factory
* autofactory
* baby factory
* beauty factory
* B-factory
* biofactory
* bum factory
* cat factory
* dark factory
* daylight factory
* don't fuck in the factory
* dream factory
* dropout factory
* factoried
* factory-backed
* factory class
* factory edge
* factory farming
* factory leg
* factorylike
* factory mark
* factory method pattern
* factory pattern
* factory reset
* factoryscape
* factory second
* factory ship
* factory team
* factorywise
* factoryworker
* Fty.
* gargle-factory
* get to the fireworks factory
* gigafactory
* Higgs factory
* interfactory
* intrafactory
* kitten factory
* like an explosion in a paint factory
* megafactory
* milk factory
* Moose Factory
* nanofactory
* nonfactory
* poop factory
* postfactory
* prefactory
* sausage factory
* send to the glue factory
* shadow factory
* shit factory
* star factory
* subfactory
* think factory
* troll factory
* Turán's brick factory problem
* York Factory

#### Related terms

* fact
* faction
* factor
* factorial
* fashion

#### Descendants

* Tok Pisin: faktori
* Welsh: ffatri

#### Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

### Adjective

factory (not comparable)
* (colloquial, of a configuration, part, etc.) Having come from the factory in the state it is currently in; original, stock.
    See how there's another layer of metal there? That's not factory.

### References

* ↑ “factory, noun.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

### Further reading

* “factory”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
* William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “factory”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.