factory

Etymology

From Latin factorium (“place of doers, makers”). Equivalent to factor + -y. Compare Middle French factorie; Italian fattoria, Spanish factoría, Portuguese feitoria, Dutch factorij.

noun

1. (chiefly Scotland, now rare) The position or state of being a factor.
2. (now historical) A trading establishment, especially set up by merchants working in a foreign country.
   We had here his curate, Mr. Furley, who had been nine years chaplain to the English factory at St. Petersburg […] . 1792, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer (Journals 1789–1795), Yale 1989, p. 184
3. A building or other place where manufacturing takes place.
   The highway to the East Coast which ran through the borough of Ebbfield had always been a main road and even now, despite the vast garages, the pylons and the gaily painted factory glasshouses which had sprung up beside it, there still remained an occasional trace of past cultures. 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess
   History has shown that, even without cheap labor, factories run perfectly well.
4. (UK, slang) A police station.
   The guys all knew each other and we were having a jolly old chinwag as we marched them out of the house in front of their stunned neighbours and into a van we had called to take them all to the Factory (police station). 2010, Harry Keeble, Kris Hollington, Crack House
5. A device or process that produces or manufactures something.
   Radio became a star factory for journalists. 2009, Sam Riley, Star Struck: An Encyclopedia of Celebrity Culture, page 200
6. A factory farm.
   chicken factory; pig factory
7. (programming) In a computer program or library, a function, method, etc. which creates an object.
   The task factory […] is the object that is responsible for creating instances of those tasks dynamically. 2010, Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi, William Bartholomew, Inside the Microsoft Build Engine

adj

1. (colloquial, of a configuration, part, etc.) Having come from the factory in the state it is currently in; original, stock.
   See how there's another layer of metal there? That's not factory.