factory
/ˈfakt(ə)ri
/- Employers must put in place proper controls to protect workers from hazards in factories, on building sites and on farms.
- You are free to wander at your own pace through nearly three-quarters of a mile of shop fronts, factories and other buildings.
- Ford recently announced it will close four U.S. factories and a truck assembly plant in Canada.
Synonyms
- The major sources of syndicated material are wire services or news factories such as AAP and Reuters.
- The fun was subsidised by the huge salaries writers were receiving from the Hollywood dream factory.
- Private health factories aren't going to happen here, nor are privately run state schools.
- In the next two years, it managed to build its first factory (as the trading posts were known) in the town of Machilipatnam on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal.
- A very small trade was indulged in spasmodically on the coast of Fukien, and it was not until 1762 that a Dutch factory was established at Canton.
Origin
Late 16th century (in sense 2): via Portuguese feitoria from medieval Latin factoria, from Latin factor (see factor). sense 1 based on late Latin factorium, literally 'oil press'.
The first factories were far from any urban area, in India and southeast Asia. A factory in the late 16th century was a trading company's foreign base or station. The first use of the word in something like the modern sense came in the early 17th century, but until the Victorian era a building where goods were produced was more usually called a manufactory. The root of factory is Latin facere ‘to make or do’, the source of a great many English words such as fact, factor, feat, and feature (all LME). The sense ‘a place where things are made’ probably came from Latin factorium ‘oil press’.