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Webster 1913 Edition

Factory

Fac′to-ry

,
Noun.
;
pl.
Factories
(-rĭz)
.
[Cf. F.
factorerie
.]
1.
A house or place where factors, or commercial agents, reside, to transact business for their employers.
“The Company’s factory at Madras.”
Burke.
2.
The body of factors in any place;
as, a chaplain to a British
factory
.
W. Guthrie.
3.
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;
as, a cotton
factory
.
Factory leg
(Med.)
,
a variety of bandy leg, associated with partial dislocation of the tibia, produced in young children by working in factories.

Webster 1828 Edition

Factory

FAC'TORY

, n.
1.
A house or place where factors reside, to transact business for their employers. The English merchants have factories in the East Indies, Turkey, Portugal, Hamburg, &c.
2.
The body of factors in any place; as a chaplain to a British factory.
3.
Contracted frommanufactory, a building or collection of buildings, appropriated to the manufacture of goods; the place where workmen are employed in fabricating goods, wares or utensils.

Definition 2024

factory

factory

English

Noun

factory ‎(plural factories)

  1. (obsolete) A trading establishment, especially set up by merchants working in a foreign country.
  2. (now rare) The position or state of being a factor.
  3. A building or other place where manufacturing takes place.
    • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 7, in The Mirror and the Lamp:
      […] St. Bede's at this period of its history was perhaps the poorest and most miserable parish in the East End of London. Close-packed, crushed by the buttressed height of the railway viaduct, rendered airless by huge walls of factories, it at once banished lively interest from a stranger's mind and left only a dull oppression of the spirit.
    • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess:
      The highway to the East Coast which ran through the borough of Ebbfield had always been a main road and even now, despite the vast garages, the pylons and the gaily painted factory glasshouses which had sprung up beside it, there still remained an occasional trace of past cultures.
  4. A device which produces or manufactures something.
  5. (programming) In a computer program or library, a function, method, etc. which creates an object.
    • 2010, Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi, William Bartholomew, Inside the Microsoft Build Engine
      The task factory […] is the object that is responsible for creating instances of those tasks dynamically.

Synonyms

Related terms

Derived terms

Translations

colonial-era trading post operated by merchants in a foreign port

External links

  • factory in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
  • factory in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

Etymology

From Middle French factorie, from Medieval Latin factoria, from Latin factor. Compare Italian fattoria, Spanish factoría, Portuguese feitoria, Dutch factorij.

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA(key): /ˈfaktəɹi/

Similar Results