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.}}

Verb

(en verb)

To change the form or structure of.

* Bible, Psalms lxxxix. 34

My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.

* Shakespeare

No power in Venice can alter a decree.

* Alexander Pope

It gilds all objects, but it alters none.

To become different.

To tailor clothes to make them fit.

To castrate, neuter or spay (a dog or other animal).

(obsolete) To agitate; to affect mentally.

(Milton)