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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"
2.
Relating to or requiring or amenable to treatment by surgery especially as opposed to medicine.  Synonym: surgical.  "A surgical procedure" , "Operative dentistry"
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



... only book of instructions for each of them; if it wants to call forth latent energy, as a Washington from his homestead, or a Lincoln from his farm, it must cease to lay stress on orthodoxy and get to work where the world really needs it. A surgeon may be ever so correct in his knowledge of operative surgery, but he must find a practise or he is useless. It is not so much for holding services, as for rendering services, that the world is looking to the ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell

... make himself, in the words of Jesus, "a eunuch for the kingdom of Heaven's sake," whether, under modern conditions, that means abstention in marriage from procreation, or voluntary sterilization by operative methods.[43] For, as Giddings has put it, the goal of the race lies, not in the ruthless exaltation of a super-man, but in the evolution of a super-mankind. Such a goal can only be reached ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... the Indian title had been extinguished in June, 1833, into the counties of Dubuque and Demoine. It also provided that each county should constitute a township, and that the first election for township officers should take place on the first Monday of November, 1834. The laws operative in the county of Iowa, and not locally inapplicable, were to have full force in the ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh

... first of them the Chartist agitation came to a head and burst, and was followed by the great movement towards association, which, developing in two directions and by two distinct methods—represented respectively by the amalgamated Trades Unions, and Co-operative Societies—has in the intervening years entirely changed the conditions of the labour question in England, and the relations of the working to the upper and middle classes. It is with this, the social and industrial side of the history of those ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... of Semitic origin. I do not suggest that we should regard the one process as in any way proving the existence of the other. We should rather treat the comparison as illustrating in another medium the effect of forces which, it is clear, were operative at various periods upon races of the same stock from which the Hebrews themselves were descended. In such material products the eye at once detects the Semite's readiness to avail himself of foreign models. In some cases ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King


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