operate

Forms

1.To perform a work or labour; to exert power or strength, physical or mechanical; to act.
- Could someone explain how this meeting operates?
- The police had inside knowledge of how the gang operated.
- In this town, the garbage removal staff operate between six o'clock at midnight.
2.To produce an effect.
- A plain, convincing reason operates on the mind both of a learned and ignorant hearer as long as they live.
- The drug operates by facilitating the negative neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), resulting in the blocking of neural long-term potentiation.
3.To 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.
- Strictures upon style, which are for the most part good, but time has operated a change in many respects even since he wrote.
4.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.
- The surgeon had to operate on her heart.

Common· #1543

From Latin operātus, perfect passive participle of operor (“to work, labor, toil, have effect”), see -ate (verb-forming suffix).