operate

verb operates · operating · operated

1. intransitive, transitive To perform a work or labour; to exert power or strength, physical or mechanical; to act. Could someone explain how this meeting operates?
2. intransitive To produce an effect. 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.
3. 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. The drug operates by facilitating the negative neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), resulting in the blocking of neural long-term potentiation.
4. intransitive To act or produce an effect on the mind; to exert moral power or influence. The Virtues of private Perſons, how Bright and Exemplary ſoever, operate but on Few; on thoſe only who are near enough to obſerve, and inclin'd to imitate them: their ſphere of Action is narrow, and their Influence is confin'd to it.
5. transitive To bring about as an effect; to cause. Strictures upon style, which are for the most part good, but time has operated a change in many respects even since he wrote.
6. intransitive, transitive 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. The surgeon had to operate on her heart.
7. intransitive, transitive To deal in stocks or any commodity with a view to speculative profits.
8. transitive To put into, or to continue in, operation or activity; to work. to operate a machine