Noun

(en noun)

The method by which a device performs its function.

It is dangerous to look at the beam of a laser while it is in operation .

The method or practice by which actions are done.

The act or process of operating; agency; the exertion of power, physical, mechanical, or moral.

* John Locke

The pain and sickness caused by manna are the effects of its operation on the stomach.

* Dryden

Speculative painting, without the assistance of manual operation , can never attain to perfection.

A planned undertaking.

The police ran an operation to get vagrants off the streets.

The ''Katrina'' relief operation was considered botched.

A business or organization.

We run our operation from a storefront.

They run a multinational produce-supply operation .

(medicine) a surgical procedure.

She had an operation to remove her appendix.

(computing, logic, mathematics) a procedure for generating a value from one or more other values (the operands).

(military) a military campaign (e.g. )

(obsolete) Effect produced; influence.

* Fuller

The bards had great operation on the vulgar.

Noun

(en noun)

Actual instance where a situation arises.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-29, volume=407, issue=8842, page=29, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Unspontaneous combustion , passage=Since the mid-1980s, when Indonesia first began to clear its bountiful forests on an industrial scale in favour of lucrative palm-oil plantations, “haze” has become an almost annual occurrence in South-East Asia. The cheapest way to clear logged woodland is to burn it, producing an acrid cloud of foul white smoke that, carried by the wind, can cover hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles.}}