operate

present singular third person operates · participle present operating · participle past operated · past operated

1. intransitivetransitiveTo perform a work or labour; to exert power or strength, physical or mechanical; to act.

   Could someone explain how this meeting operates?

   2 more examples

   In this town, the garbage removal staff operate between six o'clock at midnight.

   The police had inside knowledge of how the gang operated.

2. intransitiveTo produce an effect.

   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.

   2012 January 28, Robert L. Dorit, “Rereading Darwin”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, page 23

   1. intransitiveTo produce an appropriate physical effect; to issue in the result designed by nature; especially (medicine) to take appropriate effect on the human system.

      The drug operates by facilitating the negative neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), resulting in the blocking of neural long-term potentiation.

      2010, Peter A. Frensch, Ralf Schwarzer, Cognition and Neuropsychology

   2. intransitiveTo act or produce an effect on the mind; to exert moral power or influence.

      A plain, convincing reason operates on the mind both of a learned and ignorant hearer as long as they live.

      1720, Jonathan Swift, A Letter to a Young Clergyman

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      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.

      1706 September 18 (date delivered; 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

3. transitiveTo bring about as an effect; to cause.

   It is supposed that western Europe was overpopulated and that the crusades operated a beneficial reduction of numbers.

   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

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   Strictures upon style, which are for the most part good, but time has operated a change in many respects even since he wrote.

   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

4. intransitivetransitivemedicineTo 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.

   I'm being operated tomorrow.

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   The surgeon had to operate on her heart.

5. intransitivetransitiveTo deal in stocks or any commodity with a view to speculative profits.
6. transitiveTo put into, or to continue in, operation or activity; to work.

   to operate a system

   4 more examples

   to operate a machine

   to operate a casino

   Termokarstovoye is 250 km east of Tarkosale where Novatek operates a processing facility for its own onshore production.

   2009 June 25, Uchenna Izundu, “Total, Novatek to develop Termokarstovoye gas field”, in Oil & Gas Journal, archived from the original on 17 May 2024

   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.

   2013 June 14, Jonathan Freedland, “Obama's once hip brand is now tainted”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 18