the.com/operation
A plan precise enough to survive contact with reality, allegedly.
means An organized activity or process carried out with a purpose — whether it's a business running day to day, a military campaign, or a surgeon cutting into a body.
from From Latin 'operari' meaning 'to work' or 'to labor,' itself from 'opus' (work, a great labor — the same root that gives us 'opus' in music). It passed through French 'operation' into English by the 1300s, originally carrying a strong sense of a deity or force 'working' effects in the world before it settled into its more mundane sense of machinery, military, or medical 'working.'
- military origin
- Term borrowed from war rooms, kept the drama
- math version
- Add, subtract, multiply: operations that actually behave
- surgical sense
- Same word for heart surgery and heist movies
- business euphemism
- Calling layoffs an operation makes spreadsheets feel heroic