Behave vs Operate - What's the difference?
behave | operate |
(label) To conduct (oneself) well, or in a given way.
* Bible, ii. 21
(label) To act, conduct oneself in a specific manner;
*{{quote-magazine, date=2014-04-21, volume=411, issue=8884, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= To conduct, manage, regulate (something).
* (William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)
* 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , II.iii:
(label) To act in a polite or proper way.
(transitive, or, intransitive) To perform a work or labour; to exert power or strength, physical or mechanical; to act.
(transitive, or, intransitive) To produce an appropriate physical effect; to issue in the result designed by nature; especially (medicine) to take appropriate effect on the human system.
(transitive, or, intransitive) To act or produce effect on the mind; to exert moral power or influence.
* Atterbury
* Jonathan Swift
To perform some manual act upon a human body in a methodical manner, and usually with instruments, with a view to restore soundness or health, as in amputation, lithotomy, etc.
(transitive, or, intransitive) To deal in stocks or any commodity with a view to speculative profits.
(transitive, or, intransitive) To produce, as an effect; to cause.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-01, author=Robert L. Dorit, volume=100, issue=1, page=23
, magazine=
, title= (transitive, or, intransitive) To put into, or to continue in, operation or activity; to work.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author=(Jonathan Freedland)
, volume=189, issue=1, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly)
, title=
As verbs the difference between behave and operate
is that behave is (label) to conduct (oneself) well, or in a given way while operate is (transitive|or|intransitive) to perform a work or labour; to exert power or strength, physical or mechanical; to act.behave
English
Verb
- those that behaved themselves manfully
Subtle effects, passage=Manganism has been known about since the 19th century, when miners exposed to ores containing manganese, a silvery metal, began to totter, slur their speech and behave like someone inebriated.}}
- He did behave his anger ere 'twas spent.
- who his limbs with labours, and his mind / Behaues with cares, cannot so easie mis.
Derived terms
* behave oneselfExternal links
* * 1000 English basic wordsoperate
English
Verb
(operat)- The virtues of private persons operate but on a few.
- A plain, convincing reason operates on the mind both of a learned and ignorant hearer as long as they live.
Rereading Darwin, passage=We live our lives in three dimensions for our threescore and ten allotted years. Yet every branch of contemporary science, from statistics to cosmology, alludes to processes that operate on scales outside of human experience: the millisecond and the nanometer, the eon and the light-year.}}
- to operate a machine
Obama's once hip brand is now tainted, passage=Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.}}