verb

opérer

operate

C’est agir pour changer ou réparer quelque chose, souvent en médecine, comme quand un docteur soigne une personne avec une intervention.

Opérer means to operate, with several related meanings:

Medicine: to perform surgery on someone.
To carry out or bring about: to perform a change, transformation, or selection.
To function or act: to operate or work, especially in a technical or professional context.
To take place: in the pronominal form, s’opérer means “to occur” or “to come about.”

Opérer is a regular -er verb, though its stem changes in some forms: j’opère, nous opérons, j’opérerai or j’opèrerai.

It can be transitive, as in operating on a patient, or intransitive, as in a machine operating. The pronominal form is s’opérer .

The word comes from Latin operari, meaning “to work” or “to carry out.”

effectuer — “to carry out”; more general than opérer and not used for performing surgery.
fonctionner — “to function”; emphasizes working properly rather than acting or carrying out an operation.
se produire — “to occur”; a common synonym for s’opérer, though it does not specifically suggest a gradual change.
cesser — “to cease”; can contrast with opérer in the sense of functioning or acting.

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Le docteur doit opérer demain.verb

The doctor has to operate tomorrow.

Le chirurgien va opérer ce patient aujourd’hui.verb

The surgeon is going to operate on this patient today.

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