Operate vs Actuate - What's the difference?
operate | actuate |
(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= To activate, or to put into motion; to animate.
* Johnson
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.
* Addison
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)- 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.}}
References
* * English ergative verbs ----actuate
English
Verb
(actuat)- Wings, which others were contriving to actuate by the perpetual motion.
- A man in a fit of anger, is actuated in a very different manner from one who only thinks of that emotion.
- Men of the greatest abilities are most fired with ambition; and, on the contrary, mean and narrow minds are the least actuated by it.