operate
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈɒpəɹeɪt/
ipa: /ˈɑpəɹeɪt/
rhymes: -ɒpəɹeɪt
Forms: form: operates
form: operating
form: operated
form: operated
Etymology: From Latin operātus, perfect passive participle of operor (“to work, labor, toil, have effect”), see -ate (verb-forming suffix).
Senses: examples: text: Could someone explain how this meeting operates?
text: In this town, the garbage removal staff operate between six o'clock at midnight.
text: The police had inside knowledge of how the gang operated.
glosses: To perform a work or labour; to exert power or strength, physical or mechanical; to act.
examples: text: We live our lives in three dimensions for our threescore and ten allotted years. Yet every branch of contemporary science, from statistics to cosmology, alludes to processes that operate on scales outside of human experience: the millisecond and the nanometer, the eon and the light-year.
ref: 2012 January 24, Robert L. Dorit, “Rereading Darwin”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, page 23:
glosses: To produce an effect.
examples: text: The drug operates by facilitating the negative neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), resulting in the blocking of neural long-term potentiation.
ref: 2010, Peter A. Frensch, Ralf Schwarzer, Cognition and Neuropsychology:
glosses: To produce an effect.
To produce an appropriate physical effect; to issue in the result designed by nature; especially (medicine) to take appropriate effect on the human system.
examples: text: The Virtues of private Perſons, how Bright and Exemplary ſoever, operate but on Few; on thoſe only who are near enough to obſerve, and inclin'd to imitate them: their ſphere of Action is narrow, and their Influence is confin'd to it.
ref: 1706 September 19 (Gregorian calendar), Francis Atterbury, “A Sermon Preach’d in the Guild-Hall Chapel, London, Sept. 28. 1706. Being the Day of the Election of the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor.”, in Fourteen Sermons Preach’d on Several Occasions. […], London: […] E. P. [Edmund Parker?] for Jonah Bowyer, […], published 1708, →OCLC, page 405:
text: A plain, convincing reason operates on the mind both of a learned and ignorant hearer as long as they live.
ref: 1720, Jonathan Swift, A Letter to a Young Clergyman:
glosses: To produce an effect.
To act or produce an effect on the mind; to exert moral power or influence.
examples: text: Strictures upon style, which are for the most part good, but time has operated a change in many respects even since he wrote.
ref: 1830 March 24, Charles Francis Adams Sr., Massachusetts Historical Society: Adams Papers Digital Edition, archived from the original on 11 Aug 2022, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 3:
text: It is supposed that western Europe was overpopulated and that the crusades operated a beneficial reduction of numbers.
ref: 1906, William Graham Sumner, Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals, Boston: Ginn and Co., archived from the original on 02 May 2024, page 212:
glosses: To bring about as an effect; to cause.
examples: text: The surgeon had to operate on her heart.
text: I'm being operated tomorrow.
topics: medicine
sciences
glosses: To perform some manual act upon a human body in a methodical manner, and usually with instruments, with a view to restore soundness or health, as in amputation, lithotomy, etc.
glosses: To deal in stocks or any commodity with a view to speculative profits.
examples: text: to operate a machine
text: to operate a system
text: to operate a casino
text: Termokarstovoye is 250 km east of Tarkosale where Novatek operates a processing facility for its own onshore production.
ref: 2009 June 25, Uchenna Izundu, “Total, Novatek to develop Termokarstovoye gas field”, in Oil & Gas Journal, archived from the original on 17 May 2024:
text: Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.
ref: 2013 June 14, Jonathan Freedland, “Obama's once hip brand is now tainted”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 18:
glosses: To put into, or to continue in, operation or activity; to work.
Derived terms: battery-operated
chief operating officer
coin-operated
inter-operate
interoperate
misoperate
operatable
operatee
operating concept
operating cycle
operating depth
operating expense
operating loss
operating room
operating system
operating table
operating theatre
operating theater
operating time
overoperate
power-operated
reoperate
teleoperate
underoperate
Related terms: cooperate
coöperate
co-operate
opera
operable
operand
operant
operation
operational
operative
operator
opus