Dictionary

operation

Pronunciation

Noun

operation

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.
The method or practice by which actions are done.
The act or process of operating; agency; the exertion of power, physical, mechanical, or moral.
- 1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], chapter 2, in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Thomas Basset, […], OCLC 153628242 ↗, book I, page 8 ↗:
  the pain and sickness caused by manna are confessedly nothing but the effects of its operations on the stomach and guts.
- Speculative painting, without the assistance of manual operation, can never attain to perfection.
A planned undertaking.
The police ran an operation to get vagrants off the streets.
The Katrina relief operation was considered botched.
A business or organization.
We run our operation from a storefront.
They run a multinational produce-supply operation.
(medicine) A surgical procedure.
She had an operation to remove her appendix.
(computing, logic, mathematics) a procedure for generating a value from one or more other values (the operands).
(military) A military campaign (e.g. Operation Desert Storm)
(obsolete) Effect produced; influence.
- The bards […] had great operation on the vulgar.