Word.ws English Dictionary

operatives

operatives is the plural of operative.

Meaning of operative

Noun

operative (plural operatives)

  1. An employee or other worker with some particular function or skill.
    • Practically 50 per cent of the female operatives are found in the two groups aged 15 to 19 and 20 to 24 years, while only 18.2 per cent of the female nonoperatives are found in these age groups.1916, Women in industry series, United States. Bureau of Labor Statistics, page 366
  2. A spy, secret agent, or detective.
  3. A participant in an operation.

See all 8 meanings of operative

Questions about operatives

What is operatives the plural of?
Operatives is the plural of operative.

Words near operatives in the dictionary

  1. operative word
  2. operative words
  3. operatively
  4. operativeness
  5. operativenesses
  6. operatives
  7. operativity
  8. operatize
  9. operatized
  10. operatizes
  11. operatizing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: operatives (page history and authors); operative (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “operatives.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/operatives. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.