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Operate vs Actuate - What's the difference?

operate | actuate |

As verbs the difference between operate and actuate

is that operate is to perform a work or labour; to exert power or strength, physical or mechanical; to act while actuate is to activate, or to put into motion; to animate.

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 ----

    actuate

    English

    Verb

    (actuat)
  • To activate, or to put into motion; to animate.
  • * Johnson
  • Wings, which others were contriving to actuate by the perpetual motion.
  • To incite to action; to motivate.
  • * 1748 . HUME, David Enquiries concerning the human understanding and concerning the principles of moral. 2. ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1973. ยง 11.
  • A man in a fit of anger, is actuated in a very different manner from one who only thinks of that emotion.
  • * Addison
  • Men of the greatest abilities are most fired with ambition; and, on the contrary, mean and narrow minds are the least actuated by it.

    Derived terms

    * actuator

    See also

    * actualise, actualize ----