operation

From Middle French operation, from Old French operacion, from Latin operātiō, from the verb operor (“I work”), from opus, operis (“work”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌɒpəˈɹeɪʃən/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌɑpəˈɹeɪʃən/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -eɪʃən
• Hyphenation: op‧e‧ra‧tion

operation (countable and uncountable, plural operations)

1. The method by which a device performs its function.

   It is dangerous to look at the beam of a laser while it is in operation.

2. The method or practice by which actions are done.
3. The act or process of operating; agency; the exertion of power, physical, mechanical, or moral.
   • John Locke

     The pain and sickness caused by manna are the effects of its operation on the stomach.

   • Dryden

     Speculative painting, without the assistance of manual operation, can never attain to perfection.

4. A planned undertaking.

   The police ran an operation to get vagrants off the streets.

   The Katrina relief operation was considered botched.

5. A business or organization.

   We run our operation from a storefront.

   They run a multinational produce-supply operation.

6. (medicine) A surgical procedure.

   She had an operation to remove her appendix.

7. (computing, logic, mathematics) a procedure for generating a value from one or more other values (the operands).
8. (military) A military campaign (e.g. Operation Desert Storm)
9. (obsolete) Effect produced; influence.
   • Fuller

     The bards […] had great operation on the vulgar.

• (mathematics): function, transformation

• logical operation
• short-circuit logical operation
• (business or organization): mission operations

• operation on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• operation in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• operation in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

• petronoia

operation (plural operationes)

1. operation (surgical procedure)

operation f (plural operations)

1. function; role
   • 1595, Michel de Montaigne, Essais:

     C'est tesmoignage de crudité et indigestion que de regorger la viande comme on l'a avallée. L'estomac n'a pas faict son operation, s'il n'a faict changer la façon et la forme a ce qu'on luy avoit donné à cuire.

     It's testament of rawness and indigestion when one regurgitates meat in the same state as one swallowed it. The stomach hasn't done its function if it hasn't change the shape and the form of what one has given it to cook.