factor

Alternative forms

• factour (archaic)

Etymology

From Middle French facteur, from Latin factor (“a doer, maker, performer”), from factus (“done or made”), perfect passive participle of faciō (“do, make”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈfæktə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈfæktɚ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: fact‧or
• Rhymes: -æktə(ɹ)

Noun

factor (plural factors)

1. (obsolete) A doer, maker; a person who does things for another person or organization.

   The factor of the trading post bought the furs.

2. (now rare) An agent or representative.
   • Christopher Marlowe

     My factor sends me word, a merchant's fled / That owes me for a hundred tun of wine.

   • 1603, John Florio, transl.; Michel de Montaigne, The Essayes, […], printed at London: […] Edward Blount […], OCLC 946730821:
     , II.21:

     And let such as will number the Kings of Castile and Portugall amongst the warlike and magnanimous conquerors, seeke for some other adherent then my selfe, forsomuch as twelve hundred leagues from their idle residence they have made themselves masters of both Indias, onely by the conduct and direction of their factors, of whom it would be knowne whether they durst but goe and enjoy them in person.

   • 1644, John Milton, Aeropagitica:

     What does he therefore, but resolvs to give over toyling, and to find himself out som factor, to whose care and credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs; som Divine of note and estimation that must be.

     1985 Haynes Owners Workshop Manual, BMW

     Motor factos — Good factors will stock all of the more important components which wear out relatively quickly.

3. (law)
   1. A commission agent.
   2. A person or business organization that provides money for another's new business venture; one who finances another's business.
   3. A business organization that lends money on accounts receivable or buys and collects accounts receivable.
4. One of the elements, circumstances, or influences which contribute to produce a result.

   The greatest factor in the decision was the need for public transportation.

   The economy was a factor in this year's budget figures.

   • Herbert Spencer

     the material and dynamical factors of nutrition

5. (mathematics) Any of various objects multiplied together to form some whole.

   3 is a factor of 12, as are 2, 4 and 6.

   The factors of the Klein four-group are both cyclic of order 2.

   • 1956, Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars, p.38:

     The first thousand primes […] marched in order before him […] the complete sequence of all those numbers that possessed no factors except themselves and unity.

6. (root cause analysis) Influence; a phenomenon that affects the nature, the magnitude, and/or the timing of a consequence.

   The launch temperature was a factor of the Challenger disaster.

   • 2013 May-June, Charles T. Ambrose, “Alzheimer’s Disease”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, page 200:

     Similar studies of rats have employed four different intracranial resorbable, slow sustained release systems— […]. Such a slow-release device containing angiogenic factors could be placed on the pia mater covering the cerebral cortex and tested in persons with senile dementia in long term studies.

7. (economics) A resource used in the production of goods or services, a factor of production.
   • 2013 June 22, “T time”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 68:

     The ability to shift profits to low-tax countries by locating intellectual property in them […] is often assumed to be the preserve of high-tech companies. […] current tax rules make it easy for all sorts of firms to generate […] “stateless income”: profit subject to tax in a jurisdiction that is neither the location of the factors of production that generate the income nor where the parent firm is domiciled.

8. (Scotland) A steward or bailiff of an estate.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Sir Walter Scott to this entry?)

Verb

factor (third-person singular simple present factors, present participle factoring, simple past and past participle factored)

1. (transitive) To find all the factors of (a number or other mathematical object) (the objects that divide it evenly).
2. (of a number or other mathematical object, intransitive) To be a product of other objects.
3. (commercial, transitive) To sell a debt or debts to an agent (the factor) to collect.

Further reading

• factor in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• factor in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin factor.

Noun

factor m (plural factors)

1. factor (integral part)

Further reading

• “factor” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

Etymology

From Middle French facteur, from Latin factor (“a doer, maker, performer”), from factus (“done or made”), perfect passive participle of faciō (“do, make”).

Pronunciation

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: fac‧tor

Noun

factor m (plural factoren, diminutive factortje n)

1. a factor, element
2. (mathematics) factor

Etymology

From faciō (“to do, make”) +‎ -tor (masculine agent noun suffix).

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈfak.tor/, [ˈfak.tɔr]

Noun

factor m (genitive factōris); third declension

1. One who or which does or makes something; doer, maker, performer, perpetrator, agent, player.

References

• factor in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• factor in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• factor in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette
• factor in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• factor in William Smith et al., editor (1890) A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin

Noun

factor m (plural factores)

1. Alternative spelling of fator (superseded in Brazil by the 1943 spelling reform, and by the Orthographic Agreement of 1990 elsewhere. Still used in countries where the agreement hasn’t come into effect, and as an alternative spelling in Portugal, where the agreement came into effect in May 2009.)

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin factor. Compare the inherited doublet hechor (cf. malhechor).

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -oɾ

Noun

factor m (plural factores)

1. factor