What does factory mean?
A factory is a building, or a complex of buildings, equipped with machinery and staffed by workers to produce goods on a large scale — cars, clothing, electronics, foodstuffs, and much else. The word carries strong industrial connotations: it evokes assembly lines, shifts, smokestacks, and the organised mass production that defined the Industrial Revolution and still underpins modern economies. Beyond its literal sense, factory is often used figuratively to describe any institution that produces things in quantity with mechanical regularity — a 'pop hit factory' or 'an ideas factory' — though such uses can sound faintly derogatory when they suggest soulless output. Common fixed phrases include factory floor (the production area itself), factory worker, and factory settings (the default configuration of a device). Derived from Latin facere, 'to do or make', the word is a cornerstone of economic and historical vocabulary.
nounA building or group of buildings where goods are manufactured or assembled, typically using machines and a large workforce.
- A building or site where goods are produced on a large scale by machinery and workers.
- (figurative) A place or institution that produces something prolifically or mechanically, e.g. 'a factory of ideas' or 'a pop hit factory'.
"Her grandfather spent thirty years working in a textile factory outside Manchester."
"The car factory employs over two thousand people across three shifts."
"The studio became a veritable hit factory, churning out chart-toppers all summer."
Standard plural: -y becomes -ies after a consonant.
"Several new factories opened along the river valley last year."
The word 'factory' comes from Latin 'facere' — 'to make' — which is also hiding inside words like 'manufacture', literally 'made by hand'.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of factory
Factory derives ultimately from Latin factor, 'one who does or makes', from facere, 'to make or do'. It entered English in the late sixteenth century, initially denoting a trading post or establishment of merchants abroad — as in Portuguese factories in Asia — before acquiring its dominant modern sense of a manufacturing works in the late eighteenth century alongside the Industrial Revolution. Cognates sharing the same root include manufacture (literally 'making by hand'), facture, and factor.
How factory is actually used
Neutral register. The figurative sense ('hit factory', 'baby factory') is often mildly derogatory when it implies impersonal mass production.
Easily confused with factory
A factorial is the product of an integer and all positive integers below it in mathematics, whereas a factory is a building where goods are made.
A manufactory is simply an older synonym for factory; the two mean essentially the same thing.