Operative vs Agent - What's the difference?
operative | agent |
Effectual or important.
Functional, in working order.
Having the power of acting; hence, exerting force, physical or moral; active in the production of effects.
* South
Producing the appropriate or designed effect; efficacious.
Based upon, or consisting of, a surgical operation or operations.
An employee or other worker with some particular function or skill.
A spy, secret agent, or detective.
A participant of an operation.
One who exerts power, or has the power to act; an actor.
One who acts for, or in the place of, another (the principal), by authority from him; one intrusted with the business of another; a substitute; a deputy; a factor.
An active power or cause; that which has the power to produce an effect; as, a physical, chemical, or medicinal agent ; as, heat is a powerful agent.
(computing) In the client-server model, the part of the system that performs information preparation and exchange on behalf of a client or server. Especially in the phrase “intelligent agent” it implies some kind of autonomous process which can communicate with other agents to perform some collective task on behalf of one or more humans.
(grammar) The participant of a situation that carries out the action in this situation, e.g. "the boy" in the sentences "The boy kicked the ball" and "The ball was kicked by the boy".
As nouns the difference between operative and agent
is that operative is an employee or other worker with some particular function or skill while agent is one who exerts power, or has the power to act; an actor.As an adjective operative
is effectual or important.operative
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- He's usually in a good mood — the operative word there being "usually". Today was a disaster.
- an operative motive
- It holds in all operative principles.
- an operative dose, rule, or penalty
- operative surgery
Derived terms
* operative wordNoun
(en noun)Anagrams
* ----agent
English
(wikipedia agent)Noun
(en noun)- Heaven made us agents , free to good or ill. --Dryden.
- I see in him [Moby Dick] outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent , or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. --Herman Melville, , ch. 36
