Operative in a sentence as a noun

The operative lesson here is that "quality," as an objective concept, is hard to parse and hard to pin down.

In dictatorial countries they'd think he was a CIA operative and be tailed.

[So the operative question in this case is: what effect will the opening of private startups to public investment have?

It's generally not useful to quote flowery language like this, because it's not legally operative.

It will not be 'cancelled' by the transponder then being switched off, the operative would have to cancel it, which they wouldn't do until after contact had been reached.

A few years back I interviewed a mixed race post-operative *********** for a developer position in our startup.

Operative in a sentence as an adjective

It is about how one CIA operative mounted a brilliant operation to rescue a group of people from a hostile environment.

> no operative security barriers in placeI don't know... Even if my front door was open, you still aren't allowed to enter my house without my permission.

Many people throughout the world do not have the privilege of completing a college education and it simply cannot be a rule of life that "play" is the operative way of doing things.

Here's the operative paragraph from the article below - there is a document that indicates the NSA is spying on porn visits of ordinary Americans to use against them in intimidation for exercising their rights to free speech.

If the operative standard were otherwise, then all innovation would stand frozen altogether because it is always possible to conceive of an ill use for any technology that makes things faster, more powerful, more efficient, etc. Put any such thing into the hands of human actors and some bad results are guaranteed to follow given enough time and opportunity.

Operative definitions

noun

a person secretly employed in espionage for a government

noun

someone who can be employed as a detective to collect information

See also: shamus sherlock

adjective

being in force or having or exerting force; "operative regulations"; "the major tendencies operative in the American political system"

adjective

relating to or requiring or amenable to treatment by surgery especially as opposed to medicine; "a surgical appendix"; "a surgical procedure"; "operative dentistry"

See also: surgical

adjective

effective; producing a desired effect; "the operative word"

adjective

(of e.g. a machine) performing or capable of performing; "in running (or working) order"; "a functional set of brakes"

See also: functional