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Maneuver vs Operate - What's the difference?

maneuver | operate |

As verbs the difference between maneuver and operate

is that maneuver is to move (something) carefully, and often with difficulty, into a certain position while operate is (transitive|or|intransitive) to perform a work or labour; to exert power or strength, physical or mechanical; to act.

As a noun maneuver

is a movement, often one performed with difficulty.

maneuver

English

Alternative forms

* manoeuvre (Commonwealth) * maneuvre, manoeuver (nonstandard) *

Noun

  • (en noun) (American spelling)
  • A movement, often one performed with difficulty.
  • Parallel parking can be a difficult maneuver .
  • (often, in the plural) A large training field-exercise of military troops.
  • The army was on maneuvers .
    Joint NATO maneuvers are as much an exercise in diplomacy as in tactics and logistics.
  • An adroit or cunning action; a stratagem.
  • Verb

    (en-verb) (American spelling)
  • To move (something) carefully, and often with difficulty, into a certain position.
  • (figurative) To guide, steer, manage purposefully
  • (figurative) To intrigue, manipulate, plot, scheme
  • :: ''The patriarch maneuvered till his offspring occupied countless key posts
  • operate

    English

    Verb

    (operat)
  • (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
  • The virtues of private persons operate but on a few.
  • * Jonathan Swift
  • A plain, convincing reason operates on the mind both of a learned and ignorant hearer as long as they live.
  • 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= 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.}}
  • (transitive, or, intransitive) To put into, or to continue in, operation or activity; to work.
  • to operate a machine
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author=(Jonathan Freedland)
  • , volume=189, issue=1, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= 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.}}

    References

    * * English ergative verbs ----