Etimology
From Middle French facteur, from Latin factor (“a doer, maker, performer”), from factus (“done or made”), perfect passive participle of faciō (“do, make”).
noun
factor (plural factors)
(obsolete) A doer, maker; a person who does things for another person or organization.
An agent or representative.
(law)
One of the elements, circumstances, or influences which contribute to produce a result.
(mathematics) Any of various objects multiplied together to form some whole.
(causal analysis) Influence; a phenomenon that affects the nature, the magnitude, and/or the timing of a consequence.
(economics) A resource used in the production of goods or services, a factor of production.
(Scotland) A steward or bailiff of an estate.
Examples
The factor of the trading post bought the furs.
My factor sends me word, a merchant's fled / That owes me for a hundred tun of wine.
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.
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.
Motor factors — Good factors will stock all of the more important components which wear out relatively quickly.
The greatest factor in the decision was the need for public transportation.
The economy was a factor in this year's budget figures.
the material and dynamical factors of nutrition
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.
The first thousand primes […] marched in order before him […] the complete sequence of all those numbers that possessed no factors except themselves and unity.
The launch temperature was a factor of the Challenger disaster.
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.
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.
the factor was so scrupulous, as to keep the whole thing from his master, the lord chamberlain
Related words
hyponyms
acentric factor
animal protein factor
colony-stimulating factor
common factor
distribution factor
factor of production
form factor
Gamow factor
incremental power transfer distribution factor
load factor
paper factor
power transfer distribution factor
pull factor
push factor
rheumatoid factor
S-factor
Sommerfeld factor
transcription factor
related terms
fact
faction
factory
fashion
verb
factor (third-person singular simple present factors, present participle factoring, simple past and past participle factored)
(transitive) To find all the factors of (a number or other mathematical object) (the objects that divide it evenly).
(of a number or other mathematical object, intransitive) To be a product of other objects.
(commercial, transitive) To sell a debt or debts to an agent (the factor) to collect.