operative

  1. Adjective.  Effectual or important.
  2. Adjective.  Functional, in working order.
  3. Noun.  An employee or other worker with some particular function or skill.
  4. Noun.  A spy, secret agent, or detective.

This is an unmodified, but possibly outdated, definition from Wiktionary and used here under the Creative Commons license. Wiktionary is a great resource. If you like it too, please donate to Wikimedia.

This entry was last updated on RefTopia from its source on 3/20/2012.