operation

operation
  (ɒpəˈreɪʃən)
  [a. OF. operation, -cion action, deed (14th c., Oresme), ad. L. operātiōn-em, n. of action f. operārī to operate.]
  † 1. Action, performance, work, deed. Obs.

c 1386 Chaucer Wife's T. 292 Folk ne doon hir operacion Alwey as dooth the fyr lo in his kynde. 1432–50 tr. Higden (Rolls) VII. 155 Everyche operacion or dede of man awe to be ponderate after the intencion of the doer. 1483 Caxton G. de la Tour H j b, To nourysshe the orphanes or faderles..is an operacion of mysericorde. 1564–78 W. Bullein Dial. agst. Pest. (1888) 35 Election goeth before operation or worke. 1567 Triall Treas. (1850) 6 To horrible besides is thy operation.

  2. a. Working; exertion of force, energy, or influence; action, activity, agency; manner of working, the way in which anything works.

1390 Gower Conf. III. 118 Of this constellacioun The verray operacioun Availeth. 1432–50 tr. Higden (Rolls) II. 177 A man and the worlde be assimilate..in operation virtualle. 1526 Tindale 1 Cor. xii. 6 There are divers manners off operacions and yet but one God which worketh all thynges. 1553 Eden Treat. Newe Ind. (Arb.) 14 His [a diamond's] vertue is to bewray poisons, and to frustrate thopperacion therof. 1611 Tourneur Ath. Trag. v. i. Wks. 1878 I. 133 The Starres whose operations make The fortunes and the destinies of men. 1744 Harris Three Treat. i. (1765) 20 Can there possibly be Operation, without Motion and Change? 1818 Cruise Digest (ed. 2) I. 465 The statute 29 Cha. II. did not extend to trusts raised by operation of law. 1824 R. Stuart Hist. Steam Engine 118 The operation of the condenser pump is very simple. 1860 Tyndall Glac. i. xxvii. 213 Suggesting the operation of intelligence amid that scene of desolation.

  b. The condition of being operative or in working. Chiefly in the phrases in operation, to come into operation.

1818 Jas. Mill Brit. India II. v. ii. 349 The operation of the new constitution..was ordained to commence. 1836 P. M. Latham Lect Clin. Med. xiii. (L.), It displays a power different in kind from that of blood letting, and coming into operation..after blood-letting has done all it can. 1878 Huxley Physiogr. 80 Many other natural and artificial processes in daily operation. 1885 Manch. Exam. 16 Sept. 5/2 The sixpenny telegram rate will come into operation in the course of a fortnight.

  3. a. Power to operate or work; capacity of producing effects or a particular effect; efficacy, influence, virtue, force. Now chiefly of legal instruments.

1509 Hawes Past. Pleas. i. (Percy Soc.) 9 An olde antiquitie,..When..nature..More stronger had her operacion Than she had nowe in her digression. 1542–3 Act 34 & 35 Hen. VIII, c. 8 §1 Endued with the knowledge of the nature kinde, & operacion of certein herbes, rootes, & waters. 1606 Shakes. Ant. & Cl. iv. xv. 26 If Knife, Drugges, Serpents haue Edge, sting, or operation. 1607 Topsell Four-f. Beasts (1658) 199 Goats fat is better then Swines, not because it hath more operation in it to expell the grief, but by reason it is thick. 1660 N. Ingelo Bentivolio & Urania ii. (1682) 91 Toads are sometimes found in the midst of a firm stone, and give it Operation. 1796 Burke Regic. Peace i. Wks. VIII. 161 That heartless and dispirited people, whom Lord Somers had represented..as dead in energy and operation. 1884 Ld. Selborne in Law Times Rep. L. 3/1 He cannot..enlarge, in his own favour, the legal or equitable operation of the instrument.

  b. The effect or result produced; influence on something. Now rare or Obs.

1605 Bacon Adv. Learn. i. iii. §4 Studies have an influence and operation upon the manners of those that are conversant in them. 1655 Fuller Ch. Hist. i. i. §4 The Bards..played excellently to their Songs on their Harps; whereby they had great Operation on the Vulgar. 1656 Earl of Monmouth tr. Boccalini's Advts. fr. Parnass. i. xiv. (1674) 17 Though many remedies had been applyed..yet none of them had procured the desired operation. 1770 Junius Lett. xxxix. 199 We should..have..felt the operation of a precedent. 1831 Brewster Nat. Magic ii. (1833) 29 Among the affections of the eye which..deceive..those also who witness their operation, may be enumerated the insensibility of the eye to particular colours.

  4. a. A particular form or kind of activity; a mode of action; an active process, vital or natural.

1594 Hooker Eccl. Pol. i. xvi. § 5 The actions of men are of sundry distinct kinds..There are in men operations, some natural, some rational. 1677 Gale Crt. Gentiles iv. 30 Every thing manifestes its life by that operation which is most proper to it. 1697 Potter Antiq. Greece ii. xiii. (1715) 304 The Animal Spirits, which are the Instruments of Sensation, and all other Animal Operations. 1785 Reid Intell. Powers i. i. 221 By the operations of the mind we under⁓stand every mode of thinking of which we are conscious. 1878 Huxley Physiogr. 76 During the operation of rusting, something must be absorbed by the metal. 1878 Browning La Saisiaz 500 Would'st thou live now, regularly draw thy breath! For suspend the operation, straight law's breach results in death.

  b. Psychol. A mental activity whereby the effect of actions or ideas is logically understood or predicted, esp. with reference to the supposed stages of a child's development; also concrete operations, formal operations (see esp. quots. 1960, 1963). Cf. preoperational a.

1930 M. Gabain tr. Piaget's Child's Concept. Phys. Causality iv. 301 At each stage of intellectual development we can distinguish roughly two groups of operations. 1953 Mays & Whitehead tr. Piaget's Logic & Psychol. ii. 8 Psychologically, operations are actions which are internalizable, reversible, and coordinated into systems characterized by laws which apply to the system as a whole. 1960 J. S. Bruner Beyond Information Given (1974) xxiii. 415 Concrete operations, though they are guided by the logic of classes..are means for structuring only immediately present reality. 1963 J. H. Flavell Developmental Psychol. J. Piaget iii. 86 The period of formal operations (11–15)... The adolescent can deal effectively not only with the reality before him..but also with the world of pure possibility. 1975 J. W. Brunk Child & Adolesc. Devel. vi. 252 In the period of concrete operations (approximate ages 7–11), the child becomes capable of logical thought processes that can be applied to concrete problems.

  5. a. The performance of something of practical or mechanical nature, esp. as a practical application of a science or art, or as a scientific experiment or demonstration.

c 1386 Chaucer Sqr.'s T. 122 He wayted many a constellacion Er he had doon this operacion. c 1420 Pallad. on Husb. vii. 115 Ek in this mone is maad castracion Of calues..Therynne is subtil operacion. 1555 Eden Decades 181 They..vsed certeine secreate magicall operations. 1646 Recorde, etc. Gr. Arts 83 For your further practise..behold these operations, which I have wrought to prime minutes. 1674 Dryden Prol. to Univ. Oxford 12 Your theories are here to practice brought; As in mechanic operations wrought. 1828 J. H. Moore Pract. Navig. (ed. 20) 236 If the latitude found thus differs considerably from the latitude by account, it will be proper to repeat the operation. 1873 Hamerton Intell. Life x. iii. (1875) 353 We ought to remember what a slow and painful operation reading is to the uneducated. 1927 P. W. Bridgman Logic Mod. Physics i. 5 To find the length of an object, we have to perform certain physical operations. The concept of length is therefore fixed when the operations by which length is measured are fixed. 1935 Psychol. Rev. XLII. 517 Only those constructs based upon operations which are public and repeatable are admitted to the body of science. 1967 Encycl. Philos. V. 544/1 By the end of the nineteenth century, however, scientists had accepted the view that if we cannot devise operations which would disclose whether or not space was Euclidean, then no definite geometrical properties can be assigned to space.

  b. A business transaction, esp. one of speculative character: cf. operate 4 d. Also more generally, a business activity or enterprise. Also transf. orig. U.S.

1832 Reg. Deb. Congress U.S. 22nd Congress 2 Sess. App. 107/1 The liability to be called upon for large advances, for the above operation,..makes it absolutely necessary that the limit should be strictly attended to. 1848 W. Armstrong Stocks 11 We conceive that this operation [sc. betting] is too well understood to need any particular explanation. 1851 C. Cist Sk. Cincinnati in 1851 236 Such is the extent of the operations of this firm. 1863 All the Year Round VIII. 499 Just now there's an operation coming off West, in which you could try your wings. 1876 Holland Sev. Oaks xi. 142 It was all an acute business operation with him. 1889 Harper's Mag. Aug. 448/1 One is an operation, and the other is embezzlement. 1911 J. C. Lincoln Cap'n Warren's Wards xi. 178, I judged..that you were well enough acquainted with Wall Street to know that queer operations take place there. 1928 F. A. Bradford Money xv. 283 The open market operations of the reserve banks. 1938 J. B. Williams Theory of Investment Value ii. 10 The rate of operations never precedes stock prices. 1960 ‘E. McBain’ Give Boys Great Big Hand iv. 30 A photo of the bag on the front pages..might not be bad for our operation... You can't buy that sort of advertising space, now can you? 1977 ‘J. le Carré’ Hon. Schoolboy xviii. 442 The spearhead of the operation will be handled by ourselves.

  6. Surg. An act or a series of acts performed upon an organic body either with the hand alone or by means of an instrument, with the object of remedying deformity or injury, curing or preventing disease, or relieving pain.
  Surgical operations frequently bear the name of the person who first performed or described them, indicating the particular mode of treatment introduced by him for a special disease: e.g. Batley's, Buchanan's, Lister's operation.

1597 A. M. tr. Guillemeau's Fr. Chirurg. 1 b/2 This worde operatione is an artificialle and normaticke applicatione wrought by the handes on mans bodye, wherwith the decayed health is restored. 1655 Culpepper Pract. Phys. i. ii. 11 Manual Operations, or Chyrurgery. 1707 Reflex. upon Ridicule 67 What Curses might not the Physician expect, who should perform so wonderful an Operation? 1806 Med. Jrnl. XV. 313 The Rev. M. Le Fran{cced}ois..having become an expert inoculator, instructed them how to perform the operation. 1863 Macm. Mag. May 25 [He] knew how to treat a patient after an operation as well as antecedently to it.

  7. a. Mil. and Naval. A series of warlike or strategic acts; a movement. Also, the strategic movement of troops, ships, etc.; the people concerned with such movements. Freq. attrib. See also combined operation.

1749 Fielding Tom Jones ix. v, She again began her operations. 1781 Gibbon Decl. & F. xxiv. (1869) I. 683 Their subsequent operations were left to the discretion of the generals. 1811 Wellington Let. to Earl Liverpool 11 Sept. in Gurw. Desp. (1838) VIII. 270, I had detained the 85th..in consequence of..the prospect of an early operation. 1839 Alison Hist. Europe (1850) VII. xlii. §37. 119 Not in regular battles with the English fleet, but in detached operations in smaller armaments. 1867 Smyth Sailor's Word-bk., Line of operations, in strategy, the line an army follows to attain its objective point. 1885 U. S. Grant Pers. Mem. xxi. I. 286 The true line of operations for us was up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. 1915 R. W. Campbell Private Spud Tamson xiii. 167 Any chapter on training must also refer to night operations, generally called Night Attacks. These operations are never popular in times of training. They interfere with social engagements. 1939 War Pictorial 22 Dec. 9 (caption) The gallery above is the Operations Section of the R.A.F. Fighter Command. 1941 N. Macmillan Air Strategy iv. 30 We must perforce ignore..the layout of an Operations Room which functions as the brain to the body, the body in this case being the operational aircraft. 1943 J. S. Huxley TVA 108 The operations crew..get their orders from the control room. 1946 R.A.F. Jrnl. May 170 Now, in a world at peace, operations are but a faint memory for the men. 1968 R. L. Ackoff in Internat. Encycl. Social Sci. XI. 291/1 British military executives turned to scientists for aid when the German air attack on Britain began... These teams of scientists were usually assigned to the executive in charge of operations. 1975 A. Beevor Violent Brink vii. 167 In the Operations Room..two members of the Security Committee had advocated that the two sides should be left to fight it out.

  b. Used as first element of the code-name for a military or civil campaign.

1938 ‘Taffrail’ Operation ‘M.O.’ iii. 58 It's stuffed full of secret papers that I was going to work on at home! Operation ‘M.O.’ 1941 New Statesman 26 Apr. 443/2 In this brief workmanlike account of the Evacuation from Dunkirk, Mr. Masefield..brings back a plain exact narrative of The Operation Dynamo (as the lifting was officially called). 1945 News Chron. 1 June 1/4 This is the first picture to be released of Operation ‘Fido’. 1946 T. Driberg in Reynolds News 28 Apr. 4 Note to sub-editors and others: please cooperate in killing..the most overworked of current clichés—the whimsical application to a variety of topics of the military locution ‘Operation —’. 1950 Nat. Geographic Mag. Sept. 367/1 ‘Operation Link’, they call the project because when completed, the 4-mile bridge will link Maryland's eastern and western shores. 1968 Listener 23 May 656/2 Between Tet and the ‘second wave’, General Westmoreland launched ‘Operation Final Vietcong’ to sweep the enemy from the surroundings of Saigon. But this enterprise, nicknamed ‘Operation Final Solution’, failed. 1973 Guardian 25 Jan. 2/1 The operation to return the..prisoners of war..Operation Homecoming, as the Pentagon has called it.

  8. Math. a. The action of subjecting a number or quantity to any process whereby its value or form is affected. (The general term including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, involution, evolution, differentiation, integration, etc.) In connection with Computers freq. identical with sense 5; also = function n. 3 d.

1713 J. Ward Introd. Math. iii. vi. (ed. 2) 347 If the whole æquation..be now taken, and we proceed to a Second Operation, the Value of a may be increas'd with twelve Places of Figures more, and those may be obtain'd by plain Division only. 1743 Emerson Fluxions 39 The Series is Ay + B + Cy-1 + Dy-2 &c. and the Operation will be as follows. 1817 H. T. Colebrooke Algebra, etc. 286 Operations, subservient to the eight investigations, have been thus explained. 1885, etc. [see logical operation s.v. logical a. (and n.) 7]. 1893 J. Edwards Diff. Calc. ii. 25, d / dx is a symbol of operation which, when applied to y, denotes the result of taking the limit of the ratio of the small quantities δy, δx. 1946 Ann. Computation Lab. Harvard Univ. I. 50 Since the control tapes deal with operations only, they represent the solution of a mathematical situation independent of the values of the parameters involved. 1947 Math. Tables & Other Aids to Computation II. 356 Provision is planned for squaring, taking the reciprocal, and the maximum or minimum of two quantities, but these operations are not yet available. 1953 A. D. & K. H. V. Booth Automatic Digital Calculators vi. 35 It is customary, in all existing computers, to have circuits which will perform the operations of addition and subtraction. Ibid. 37 The left shift operation is more complex. 1956 Berkeley & Wainwright Computers ii. 38 The arithmetical operations of a computer..include addition, counting, subtraction,..truncating, rounding off, [etc.]. 1969 P. B. Jordain Condensed Computer Encycl. 358 In general, an operation is a single irreducible step in the performance of a computer program... In some higher-level languages, an operation is a single higher-level step (such as finding a square root). 1972 Gross & Brainerd Fund. Programming Concepts ix. 248 The first hexadecimal digit is called the operation code and specifies which operation is to be performed, such as add, subtract, print, etc.

  b. In the numerical solution of simultaneous linear equations by relaxation, the process of changing the trial value of one of the unknowns in order to reduce the magnitude of one of the residuals.

[1935 R. V. Southwell in Proc. R. Soc. A. CLI. 65 In the operation considered, B is held fixed and A is moved.] 1940 ― Relaxation Methods in Engin. Sci. i. 1 The Relaxation Method takes it farther by devising methods of systematic adjustment: we apply a series of operations, each one an indirect solution of a particularly simple kind, and in this way we ‘tune up’ a trial solution..until it conforms with some imposed standard of accuracy. 1957 L. Fox Numerical Solution Two-Point Boundary Probl. iii. 38 The computations are embodied in Tables 1 and 2, showing respectively the possible operations and details of the relaxation process. 1969 W. A. Watson et al. Numerical Anal. I. vi. 160 Usually the operation which reduces the magnitude of the largest residual is used at any stage of the working.

  † 9. a. The action of making or producing something. Obs. rare^—1. b. Something made; a product, work. Obs.

? a 1500 Chester Pl. i. 46 The blessing of my benignitie I geue to my first operacion. 1616 R. C. Times' Whistle iii. 878 It then did please High Iove ('ere he began mans operation) To give vnto the Angels their creation. 1774 J. Bryant Mythol. I. p. xiv, The whole was the operation of one and the same people.

  10. The action of operating or working a machine, engine, railway, business, etc.: see operate 6, 7.

1872 J. Richards (title) Treatise on the Construction and Operation of Wood-working Machines. 1895 Westm. Gaz. 12 Jan. 3/2 Electricity has been used for the operation of the Montauk's turrets for some time. 1898 Times 22 Feb. 13 In America..what with us is a single department [on Railways] is split into ‘traffic’ and ‘operation’.

  11. attrib. and Comb. (chiefly in sense 6), as operation-room, operation wound, etc.; operation code Computers, a character or set of characters that when put into the operation part of an instruction specifies the operation that is performed; operation part Computers, the part of an instruction that receives the operation code; operations research U.S. = operational research (operational a. 1 b); so operations researcher; operations table Math., in the numerical solution of simultaneous linear equations by relaxation, a table showing the changes in the values of the residuals that result when each unknown in turn is increased by one; operation-table, an operating-table (see operating vbl. n.).

1949 E. C. Berkeley Giant Brains vi. 103 Division has the code 76 and multiplication the code 761, and so the difference is essentially an operation code not in the third or C field. 1972 C. B. Germain PL/1 for IBM 360 ii. 14/2 The general format of 360 instructions is an operation code..specifying the operation to be performed followed by two addresses to specify the data, or operands, involved in the operation.

1879 St. George's Hosp. Rep. IX. 471 An operation list is appended.

1957 D. D. McCracken Digital Computer Programming ii. 14 Instruction Format... The first two digits..are called the operation part, and tell the machine what to do. The next four digits are termed the address part. 1969 P. B. Jordain Condensed Computer Encycl. 359 The operation part is usually at the left end of the instruction, and is of fixed length.

1945 E. J. King in G. C. Marshall et al. War Rep. (1947) 719 The application, by qualified scientists, of the scientific method to the improvement of naval operating techniques and material, has come to be called operations research. 1956 Berkeley & Wainwright Computers vii. 281 Much operations research can be carried out with pencil, paper, and a desk calculating machine. 1969 J. Argenti Managem. Techniques 81 The same problem occurs in Operations Research, i.e. in those management techniques that depend largely upon mathematics. 1970 P. M. Morse in G. J. Kelleher Challenge to Syst. Analysis iii. 23 Operations research has emerged as a unified area of applied science..designed to influence policy.

1953 Operational Research Q. IV. 51 The operations researcher's competence stops.

1806 Forsyth Beauties Scot. III. 239 The operation-room is a large circular apartment.

1940 R. V. Southwell Relaxation Methods in Engin. Sci. i. 8 Having completed the calculations we can present their results in an operations table. 1957 L. Fox Numerical Solution Two-Point Boundary Probl. iii. 40 The full number of figures is used for the calculation of residuals, but the coefficients can be rounded-off to convenient numbers for use in the operations table. 1969 W. A. Watson et al. Numerical Anal. I. vi. 159 For ease of reference during the working it is convenient to summarise the effects on the residuals of unit changes in the unknowns in a table, usually referred to as the operations table.

1896 Westm. Gaz. 5 Mar. 3/2 Smoking his cigar..until he mounted the operation table.

1876 Clin. Soc. Trans. IX. 308 The discharge from the operation wound was intense.

Oxford English Dictionary