operation
n 1: the state of being in effect or being operative; "that rule
is no longer in operation"
2: a business especially one run on a large scale: "a
large-scale farming operation"; "a multinational
operation"; they paid taxes on every stage of the
operation"; "they had to consolidate their operations"
3: an act or process or manner of functioning or operating:
"the power of its engine determines its operation": "the
plane's performance in high winds" [syn: {functioning}, {performance}]
4: a planned activity involving many people performing various
actions: "the biggest police operation in French history";
"running a restaurant is quite an operation"; "consolidate
the companies various operations"
5: (computer science) data processing in which the result is
completely specified by a rule (especially the processing
that results from a single instruction); "it can perform
millions of operations per second"
6: a military or naval action (as a maneuver or campaign); "it
was a joint operation of the navy and air force"
7: a therapeutic procedure with instruments to repair damage or
arrest disease in a living body; "they will schedule the
operation as soon as an operating room is available"; "he
died while undergoing surgery" [syn: {surgical operation},
{surgical procedure}, {surgery}]
8: a process or series of acts especially of a practical or
mechanical nature involved in a particular form of work:
"the operations in building a house"; "certain machine
tool operations" [syn: {procedure}]
9: the performance of some composite cognitive activity; an
operation that affects mental contents; "the process of
thinking"; "the act of remembering" [syn: {process}, {cognitive
process}, {cognitive operation}, {act}]
10: calculation by mathematical methods; "the problems at the
end of the chapter demonstrated the mathematical
processes involved in the derivation"; "they were
learning the basic operations of arithmetic" [syn: {mathematical
process}, {mathematical operation}]