- product
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Analogous words: forming or form, fabrication, manufacturing or manu-facture (see corresponding verbs at MAKE): article, object, *thing2 Product, production, produce are comparable when they denote something produced or brought into being by a process or operation, especially one involving labor or effort.Product is the most general of these terms, applicable to anything produced by generation, growth, labor, or thought or by any industrial, chemical, mental, or other process or by the operation of causes in no way controllable by man{
the literary products of the Age of Reason
}{soot is usually the product of the imperfect combustion of fuel
}{even the simplest poem is the product of much . . . work— Highet
}{he is a product of his party machine, in which he has had his whole existence— Edmund Wilson
}Production, in the sense of the thing produced, is generally restricted in its application to human products involving intellectual or artistic labor, and it is the usual term in theatrical and motion-picture use. A work of sculpture, a philosophical or historical treatise, or a theatrical representation of a play may be described as a production{the greatest production of Hamlet that this country has been privileged to see and hear
}{the finest productions of Praxiteles or Zeuxis— Froude
}{Wagner believed Parsifal the climactic production of his career
}But production is also used in a collective sense to denote all the things, often of a specified or implied kind, manufactured or grown to satisfy human wants{an increase of steel production is anticipated
}{this chart shows the relationship between pork production and pork prices— Sat. Review
}Produce is ordinarily a collective noun applied to natural and especially agricultural as distinguished from industrial products{the meager produce of the land— Cowper
}{able to exist for a fortnight in the western Mediterranean where less sea produce was forthcoming— N. B. Marshall
}{the produce that is likely to result from the mating of one individual with another— Wynmalen
}Sometimes the term is applied specifically to vegetables and fruits{stripping the country of hogs and cattle, produce and flour— Mason
}and sometimes it is applied to products of human and especially human intellectual effort{nine-tenths of modern science is . . . the produce of men whom their contemporaries thought dreamers— Bagehot
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
