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Operative   /ˈɑpərətɪv/   Listen
Operative

adjective
1.
Being in force or having or exerting force.  "The major tendencies operative in the American political system"  Antonym: inoperative.
2.
Relating to or requiring or amenable to treatment by surgery especially as opposed to medicine.  Synonym: surgical.  "A surgical procedure" , "Operative dentistry"  Antonym: medical.
3.
Effective; producing a desired effect.
4.
(of e.g. a machine) performing or capable of performing.  Synonyms: functional, running, working.  "A functional set of brakes"
noun
1.
A person secretly employed in espionage for a government.  Synonyms: intelligence agent, intelligence officer, secret agent.
2.
Someone who can be employed as a detective to collect information.  Synonyms: PI, private detective, private eye, private investigator, shamus, sherlock.



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"Operative" Quotes from Famous Books



... fear of the woman as in possession of and in league with supernatural powers, there was an additional motive to avoidance in the fear of transmission of her weakness through contact, a fear based on a belief in sympathetic magic, and believed with all the "intensely realized, living, and operative assurance" of which the untutored mind is capable. Crawley masses an overwhelming amount of data on this point, and both he and Frazer show the strength of these beliefs. Indeed, in many cases violation proved to be "sure death," not by the hand of man, but from sheer fright. As a result, ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... and articles have been appearing in certain of the Labour and capitalist Press favourable to the Bolsheviks, notably the "Labour Leader," concerning the co-operative movement in Russia. It is alleged that the growth of the co-operative movement there is evidence that the Bolshevist Government is really and seriously building up a new Socialist society despite the grave difficulties within and the antagonism from without. It ...
— Bolshevism: A Curse & Danger to the Workers • Henry William Lee

... that man is the highest rational existence in the universe; but this is absurd, for the intellect of man in plainly very circumscribed, and he is slowly discovering laws which account for the phenomena which he sees, which laws were operative for ages before he discovered them, and imply infinitely more intellect in their invention, so to speak, and imposition and nice adjustment with one another, than he shows in their mere discovery. A student, for instance, has a problem put before him, say upon the adjustments of the ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler

... the Statute Book in that session, and therefore it was unjust to say that his loyalty was only conditional; he had asked for nothing that was not won in advance. Now, instead of an Act to become immediately operative, Ireland received one with at least a year's delay. Yet this moratorium did ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... streets were unusually quiet with a Sabbath stillness. No factory bells that morning; no early workmen going to their labours; no slip-shod girls cleaning the windows of the little shops which broke the monotony of the street; instead, you might see here and there some operative sallying forth for a breath of country air, or some father leading out his wee toddling bairns for the unwonted pleasure of a walk with "Daddy," in the clear frosty morning. Men with more leisure on week-days would perhaps have walked quicker than they did through the fresh sharp air ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell


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