Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A building or group of buildings in which goods are manufactured; a plant.
  • noun A business establishment for commercial agents or factors in a foreign country.
  • noun The source of prolific production.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An establishment of merchants and factors resident in a foreign place, formed for mutual protection and advantage, usually occupying special quarters under their own control, and sometimes having fortified posts and depots.
  • noun A body of factors; the association of persons in a factorial establishment.
  • noun The employment or authority of a factor; power to act as a factor.
  • noun A building or group of buildings appropriated to the manufacture of goods, including the machinery necessary to produce the goods, and the engine or other power by which such machinery is propelled; the place where workers are employed in fabricating goods, wares, or utensils: as, a cotton factory.
  • noun Manufacture; making.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A house or place where factors, or commercial agents, reside, to transact business for their employers.
  • noun The body of factors in any place.
  • noun A building, or collection of buildings, appropriated to the manufacture of goods; the place where workmen are employed in fabricating goods, wares, or utensils; a manufactory.
  • noun (Med.) a variety of bandy leg, associated with partial dislocation of the tibia, produced in young children by working in factories.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun obsolete A trading establishment, especially set up by merchants working in a foreign country.
  • noun The position or state of being a factor.
  • noun A building or other place where manufacturing takes place.
  • noun A device which produces or manufactures something.
  • noun programming In a computer program or library, a function or method which creates an object.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a plant consisting of one or more buildings with facilities for manufacturing

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Late Latin factōria, oil press, mill, and Medieval Latin factōria, establishment for factors, both from Latin factor, factor; see factor.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Medieval Latin factoria, from Latin factor. Probably via a Romance language; compare Italian fattoria, Spanish factoría, Portuguese feitoria.

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Examples

  • He said the ­factory twice received phone calls from the Israeli military telling them to evacuate the building in the days before the strike, but the factory was not used by Hamas or other Palestinian fighters.

    The Guardian World News 2010

  • He said the ­factory twice received phone calls from the Israeli military telling them to evacuate the building in the days before the strike, but the factory was not used by Hamas or other Palestinian fighters.

    The Guardian World News 2010

  • $engine = $factory - > createReportEngine ($config); zput ( "/ tmp / factory", $engine);

    Planet PHP 2009

  • This notion of treating animals like machines leads to another of the ongoing semantics debates: over the term factory farm.

    The Foie Gras Wars Mark Caro 2009

  • This notion of treating animals like machines leads to another of the ongoing semantics debates: over the term factory farm.

    The Foie Gras Wars Mark Caro 2009

  • But now that the coining factory is destroyed, I shall find it difficult to bring home the crime to anyone.

    The Secret Passage Fergus Hume 1895

  • The Freitag factory is located in a huge old (beautiful) warehouse.

    kitschenette - life in the swiss lane 2009

  • The Freitag factory is located in a huge old (beautiful) warehouse.

    August 2009 2009

  • The Freitag factory is located in a huge old (beautiful) warehouse.

    Freitag factory 2009

  • This was the point of the No Free Lunch conjectures which Dembski put forward, that surrogates, like computers which create designs (a factory is an excellent example, or a genetic algorithm), still regress to something that is akin to conscious intelligence.

    Aiguy's Computer 2008

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