factories

Noun

factory (plural factories)

1. A building or other place where manufacturing takes place.
   • […] 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...1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

   Synonyms:

   manufactory

2. (UK, slang) A police station.
   • The guys all knew each other and we were having a jolly old chinwag as we marched them out of the house in front of their stunned neighbours and into a van we had called to take them all to the Factory (police station).2010, Harry Keeble, Kris Hollington, Crack House
3. A device or process that produces or manufactures something.
   • Radio became a star factory for journalists.2009, Sam Riley, Star Struck: An Encyclopedia of Celebrity Culture, page 200
4. A factory farm.
   • chicken factory; pig factory
5. In a computer program or library, a function, method, etc. which creates an object.
   • The task factory […] is the object that is responsible for creating instances of those tasks dynamically.2010, Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi, William Bartholomew, Inside the Microsoft Build Engine
6. (attributive) The original state of an electronic device, as it was when it came from the manufacturer.
   • factory settings; factory defaults; a factory reset

See all 10 meanings of factory