factor

Etymology

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

noun

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. An agent or representative.
   Motor factors — Good factors will stock all of the more important components which wear out relatively quickly. 1985, Haynes Owners Workshop Manual, BMW
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.
   1864-1898, Herbert Spencer, Principles of Biology 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.
   The first thousand primes[…]marched in order before him[…]the complete sequence of all those numbers that possessed no factors except themselves and unity. 1956, Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars, page 38
6. (causal 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.
   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. 2013 May-June, Charles T. Ambrose, “Alzheimer’s Disease”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, page 200
7. (economics) A resource used in the production of goods or services, a factor of production.
   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. 2013-06-22, “T time”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 68
8. (Scotland) A steward or bailiff of an estate.

verb

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.