factory

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A building or group of buildings in which goods are manufactured; a plant.
2. n. A vessel in which newly caught seafood is prepared for shipment and sale: a floating fish factory.
3. n. A business establishment for commercial agents or factors in a foreign country.
4. n. The source of prolific production: a rock group that was a hit-tune factory; a motel that served as an illegal drug factory.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. An establishment of merchants and factors resident in a foreign place, formed for mutual protection and advantage, usually occupying special quarters under their own control, and sometimes having fortified posts and depots. In the middle ages foreign factories existed in most large European cities, and to a later period in many Asiatic and African ports, often giving rise, especially in India, to the acquisition of extensive political power. A few are still maintained in India and western Africa, most of them by the French, in a modified form and sometimes under other designations.
2. n. A body of factors; the association of persons in a factorial establishment.
3. n. The employment or authority of a factor; power to act as a factor.
4. n. A building or group of buildings appropriated to the manufacture of goods, including the machinery necessary to produce the goods, and the engine or other power by which such machinery is propelled; the place where workers are employed in fabricating goods, wares, or utensils: as, a cotton factory. The general distinction between a factory and a shop is that the work done in the former is on a larger scale, and usually of a kind requiring more machinery. When the more simple kinds of work commonly done in shops, however, are carried on in large establishments, the latter are often called factories; but establishments for some branches of production are seldom or never so called, however large, as machine-shops, car-shops, coopers' shops, etc. Also called manufactory.
5. n. Manufacture; making.

Wiktionary

1. n. obsolete A trading establishment, especially set up by merchants working in a foreign country.
2. n. The position or state of being a factor.
3. n. A building or other place where manufacturing takes place.
4. n. A device which produces or manufactures something.
5. n. programming In a computer program or library, a function or method which creates an object.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A house or place where factors, or commercial agents, reside, to transact business for their employers.
2. n. The body of factors in any place.
3. n. A building, or collection of buildings, appropriated to the manufacture of goods; the place where workmen are employed in fabricating goods, wares, or utensils; a manufactory.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a plant consisting of one or more buildings with facilities for manufacturing