What is "action"

Action \Ac"tion\, n. [OF. action, L. actio, fr. agere to do. See Act.]

1. A process or condition of acting or moving, as opposed to rest; the doing of something; exertion of power or force, as when one body acts on another; the effect of power exerted on one body by another; agency; activity; operation; as, the action of heat; a man of action.

   One wise in council, one in action brave.
   --Pope.

2. An act; a thing done; a deed; an enterprise. (pl.): Habitual deeds; hence, conduct; behavior; demeanor.

   The Lord is a Good of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.
   --1 Sam. ii.

3. 3. The event or connected series of events, either real or imaginary, forming the subject of a play, poem, or other composition; the unfolding of the drama of events.

4. Movement; as, the horse has a spirited action.

5. (Mech.) Effective motion; also, mechanism; as, the breech action of a gun.

6. (Physiol.) Any one of the active processes going on in an organism; the performance of a function; as, the action of the heart, the muscles, or the gastric juice.

7. (Orat.) Gesticulation; the external deportment of the speaker, or the suiting of his attitude, voice, gestures, and countenance, to the subject, or to the feelings.

8. (Paint. & Sculp.) The attitude or position of the several parts of the body as expressive of the sentiment or passion depicted.

9. (Law)

   1. A suit or process, by which a demand is made of a right in a court of justice; in a broad sense, a judicial proceeding for the enforcement or protection of a right, the redress or prevention of a wrong, or the punishment of a public offense.

   2. A right of action; as, the law gives an action for every claim.

10. (Com.) A share in the capital stock of a joint-stock company, or in the public funds; hence, in the plural, equivalent to stocks. [A Gallicism] [Obs.]

    The Euripus of funds and actions.
    --Burke.

11. An engagement between troops in war, whether on land or water; a battle; a fight; as, a general action, a partial action.

12. (Music) The mechanical contrivance by means of which the impulse of the player's finger is transmitted to the strings of a pianoforte or to the valve of an organ pipe.
    --Grove.

    Chose in action. (Law) See Chose.

    Quantity of action (Physics), the product of the mass of a body by the space it runs through, and its velocity.

    Syn: Action, Act.

    Usage: In many cases action and act are synonymous; but some distinction is observable. Action involves the mode or process of acting, and is usually viewed as occupying some time in doing. Act has more reference to the effect, or the operation as complete.

    To poke the fire is an act, to reconcile friends who have quarreled is a praiseworthy action.
    --C. J. Smith.

mid-14c., "cause or grounds for a lawsuit," from Anglo-French accioun, Old French accion (12c.) "action, lawsuit, case," from Latin actionem (nominative actio) "a putting in motion; a performing, doing," noun of action from past participle stem of agere "to do" (see act (v.)). Sense of "something done, an act, deed" is late 14c. Meaning "fighting" is from c.1600. As a film director's command, it is attested from 1923. Meaning "excitement" is recorded from 1968. Phrase actions speak louder than words is attested from 1731.

interj. Demanding or signifying the start of something, usually an act or scene of a theatric performance. n. 1 Something done so as to accomplish a purpose. 2 A way of motion or functioning. 3 A fast-paced activity. 4 A mechanism; a moving part or assembly. 5 (context music English): The mechanism, that is the set of moving mechanical parts, of a keyboard instrument, like a piano, which transfers the motion of the key to the sound-making device.Marshall Cavendish Corporation p.1079 6 (context slang English) sexual intercourse. 7 The distance separating the strings and the fretboard on the guitar. 8 (context military English) combat. 9 (context legal English) A charge or other process in a law court (also called lawsuit and ''actio''). 10 (context mathematics English) A mapping from a pairing of mathematical objects to one of them, respecting their individual structures. The pairing is typically a Cartesian product or a tensor product. The object that is not part of the output is said to ''act'' on the other object. In any given context, ''action'' is used as an abbreviation for a more fully named notion, like group action or ''left'' group action. 11 The event or connected series of events, either real or imaginary, forming the subject of a play, poem, or other composition; the unfolding of the drama of events. 12 (context art painting and sculpture English) The attitude or position of the several parts of the body as expressive of the sentiment or passion depicted. 13 (context bowling English) spin put on the bowling ball. 14 (context business obsolete a Gallicism English) A share in the capital stock of a joint-stock company, or in the public funds. vb. (context transitive management English) To act on a request etc, in order to put it into effect.

1. v. institute legal proceedings against; file a suit against; "He was warned that the district attorney would process him"; "She actioned the company for discrimination" [syn: sue, litigate, process]

2. put in effect; "carry out a task"; "execute the decision of the people"; "He actioned the operation" [syn: carry through, accomplish, execute, carry out, fulfill, fulfil]

1. n. something done (usually as opposed to something said); "there were stories of murders and other unnatural actions"

2. the state of being active; "his sphere of activity"; "he is out of action" [syn: activity, activeness] [ant: inaction, inaction, inaction]

3. a judicial proceeding brought by one party against another; one party prosecutes another for a wrong done or for protection of a right or for prevention of a wrong [syn: legal action, action at law]

4. an act by a government body or supranational organization; "recent federal action undermined the segregationist position"; "the United Nations must have the power to propose and organize action without being hobbled by irrelevant issues"; "the Union action of emancipating Southern slaves"

5. a military engagement; "he saw action in Korea" [syn: military action]

6. a process existing in or produced by nature (rather than by the intent of human beings); "the action of natural forces"; "volcanic activity" [syn: natural process, natural action, activity]

7. the series of events that form a plot; "his novels always have a lot of action"

8. the operating part that transmits power to a mechanism; "the piano had a very stiff action" [syn: action mechanism]

9. the trait of being active and energetic and forceful; "a man of action"

10. the most important or interesting work or activity in a specific area or field; "the action is no longer in technology stocks but in municipal bonds"; "gawkers always try to get as close to the action as possible"

ACTION is a bus service operator in Canberra, Australia.

Action is a Canadian English language Category B specialty channel owned by Corus Entertainment specializing in films and television series targeting males.

Action is an American comedy series about a Hollywood producer named Peter Dragon, who is trying to recover from his last box-office failure. It aired on Fox during the 1999-2000 season. The series was critically praised for its irreverent, and sometimes hostile look at Hollywood culture. Thirteen episodes were produced. The show was created by Chris Thompson and the show runner was Don Reo. Future Saturday Night Live cast member Will Forte was the story editor for twelve episodes, and wrote two.

In firearms terminology, an action is the mechanism that handles the ammunition (loads, locks, fires, and extracts the cartridges) or the method by which that mechanism works. Breech-loading weapons have actions; actions are technically not present on muzzleloaders, as all loading is done by hand. The mechanism that fires a muzzle-loader is called the lock.

Actions can be categorized in several ways, including single action versus double action, break action versus bolt action, and others.

In physics, action is an attribute of the dynamics of a physical system from which the equations of motion of the system can be derived. It is a mathematical functional which takes the trajectory, also called path or history, of the system as its argument and has a real number as its result. Generally, the action takes different values for different paths. Action has the dimensions of [energy]· [time] or [momentum]· [length], and its SI unit is joule-second.

Action was a controversial weekly British anthology comic that was published by IPC Magazines, starting on 14 February 1976.

Concerns over the comic's violent content saw it withdrawn from sale on 16 October 1976. It reappeared the following month, in toned-down form, and continued publication until 12 November 1977, at which point it was merged with Battle Picture Weekly. Despite its short lifespan, Action was highly influential on the British comics scene, and was a direct forerunner of the long-running 2000 AD.

Action may refer to:

• Group action
  • Continuous group action
• Monoid or semigroup action

• Action (physics)

Action (formerly Action Food Barns and Action Supermarkets) was an Australian supermarket chain.

Based in Perth, Western Australia, Action had 80 supermarkets across Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales, and was one of the largest supermarket chains in Australia. Action Supermarkets Head Office was located at 218 Bannister Road Canning Vale WA 6155, Action's Fresh Produce Centre was located at 24 Walters Drive Osborne Park and Meat Centre at Pavers Circle Malaga.

Action is Punchline's first full-length album on Fueled by Ramen Records. It has notably hopeful and positive lyrics compared to bands with a similar fanbase, in the vein of pop punk and so-called " emo" of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Steve Soboslai (guitar), Paul Menotiades (guitar) and Chris Fafalios (bass guitar) shared vocals on the album, most going to Soboslai. While PJ Caruso (drums) does not sing on the album, the rhythm section is a major driving force of the majority of songs on Action.

In literature, action is the principle subject or story. This is as distinguished from an incidental episode. In other words, action is what a character does in a play, short story, or a fiction prose. Actions are different from acts, which are any of the main sections of a play or other dramatic performance.

Action is the sixteenth album by Japanese hard rock band B'z, released on December 5, 2007. It sold 292,687 copies in its first week, reaching #1 at Oricon.

The song "Friction" was featured in the PlayStation 2 game Burnout Dominator and It was later featured on Burnout Paradise the song became the band's first English song to be sold in the US though the iTunes Store.

Action is a 1921 American Western film directed by John Ford and featuring Hoot Gibson. It was based on Peter B. Kyne's popular novel The Three Godfathers. The film is considered to be lost. According to contemporaneous newspaper reports, Action was based on J. Allan Dunn's novel, The Mascotte of the Three Star; Mascotte appeared as the lead novel in the pulp magazine Short Stories, February 1921.

An action is something which is done by an agent. In common speech, the term action is often used interchangeably with the term behavior. In the philosophy of action, the behavioural sciences, and the social sciences, however, a distinction is made: behavior is defined as automatic and reflexive activity, while action is defined as intentional, purposive, conscious and subjectively meaningful activity . Thus, throwing a ball is an instance of action; it involves an intention, a goal, and a bodily movement guided by the agent. On the other hand, catching a cold is not considered an action because it is something which happens to a person, not something done by one.

Other events are less clearly defined as actions or not. For instance, distractedly drumming ones fingers on the table seems to fall somewhere in the middle. Deciding to do something might be considered a mental action by some. However, others think it is not an action unless the decision is carried out. Unsuccessfully trying to do something might also not be considered an action for similar reasons (for e.g. lack of bodily movement). It is contentious whether believing, intending, and thinking are actions since they are mental events.

Some would prefer to define actions as requiring bodily movement (see behaviorism). The side effects of actions are considered by some to be part of the action; in an example from Anscombe's manuscript Intention, pumping water can also be an instance of poisoning the inhabitants. This introduces a moral dimension to the discussion (see also Moral agency). If the poisoned water resulted in a death, that death might be considered part of the action of the agent that pumped the water. Whether a side effect is considered part of an action is especially unclear in cases in which the agent isn't aware of the possible side effects. For example, an agent that accidentally cures a person by administering a poison he was intending to kill him with.

A primary concern of philosophy of action is to analyze the nature of actions and distinguish them from similar phenomena. Other concerns include individuating actions, explaining the relationship between actions and their effects, explaining how an action is related to the beliefs and desires which cause and/or justify it (see practical reason), as well as examining the nature of agency. A primary concern is the nature of free will and whether actions are determined by the mental states that precede them (see determinism). Some philosophers (e.g. Donald Davidson) have argued that the mental states the agent invokes as justifying his action are physical states that cause the action. Problems have been raised for this view because the mental states seem to be reduce to mere physical causes. Their mental properties don't seem to be doing any work. If the reasons an agent cites as justifying his action, however, are not the cause of the action, they must explain the action in some other way or be causally impotent.

The action of an instrument plucked by hand is the distance between the fingerboard and the string.

In the guitar and similar instruments, the action is the distance between the fingerboard and the string, which determines how easy it is to sound notes when pressure is applied with the fingertips. Generally a low action is considered to be more playable, due to the lower amount of pressure needed to press the string to the fingerboard. However, if the action is set too low, there is a danger that the vibrating string will strike the frets or fingerboard below it, creating an unwanted buzzing noise (on fretted instruments, this is known as fret buzz). Conversely, if the action is too high, then the strings may be too taut to fully depress.

The piano action mechanism, or the key action mechanism, or simply the action of a piano or other musical keyboards, is the mechanical assembly which translates the depression of the keys into rapid motion of a hammer, which creates sound by striking the strings. Action can refer to that of a piano or other musical keyboards, including the electronic or digital stage piano and synthesizer, on which some models have "weighted keys", which simulate the touch and feel of an acoustic piano. The design of the key action mechanism determines the "weighted keys" feeling; that is, the feeling of the heaviness of the touch of the keys."A professional pianist is likely to care most about the piano's action, because that is what controls its responsiveness and relative lightness--or heaviness--of touch. Roughly speaking, a piano's action is light when its keys fall easily under the fingers, and heavy when a noticeable downward thrust is required. The action, in short, is what makes a piano playable or not to an individual musician."

Action is a French television channel which shows action films and TV movies.

Action is the second album by the American garage rock band, Question Mark & the Mysterians, released in 1967.

The album's sleeve notes include facts about the band including their interests. Much of their interests are also the inspiration for many of their songs.

Action (also released as Easy Walker!) is a 1968 studio album by Oscar Peterson, the first volume of his Exclusively for My Friends series.

Action is the debut album of French electronic artist Uppermost. It was released on CD 19 September 2011 through his label, Uppwind. On 28 November 2011 the album was released on Beatport through Zimbalam and on Amazon through Uppwind. After its digital release, it held the #1 spot on the Beatport electro-house chart in December 2011.

Action is the first mini-album by South Korean Boy band NU'EST. It was released on July 11, 2012 under Pledis Entertainment.

Action (aka Action Theater) was a planned 1945 NBC radio anthology series of action-adventure tales. However, the series went no further than the first audition drama, although an announcement on the show reveals an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's "Victory" (with Nancy Kelly and Roger Pryor) was scheduled, along with stories by Ernest Hemingway and Jack London.

Performing before a live studio audience, Jane Wyatt and Robert Lowery starred in the pilot program, "High Explosive", with a supporting cast of Ralph Sanford and Tom Holland. It was adapted by writer-director Maxwell Shane (1905-1983) from Paramount's High Explosive (1943), a film scripted by Shane and Howard J. Green from a story by Joseph Hoffman.

Produced by Irvin Atkins for Radio Creators, "High Explosive" aired January 15, 1945, with music by Gregory Stone. It was introduced by host William Gargan and announcer Art Baker with a commentary by Shane in the middle of the show. Best known in the 1940s for his Big Town screenplays and radio scripts, Shane later scripted City Across the River, the 1949 film of Irving Shulman's The Amboy Dukes, and he was a writer-producer for TV's Thriller (1960-62).

In the Unified Modeling Language, an action is a named element that is the fundamental unit of executable functionality. The execution of an action represents some transformation or processing in the modeled system. An action execution represents the run-time behavior of executing an action within a specific behavior execution. All action executions will be executions of specific kinds of actions because Action is an abstract class. When the action executes, and what its actual inputs are, is determined by the concrete action and the behaviors in which it is used.

An action is the specification of an executable statement and is the fundamental unit of processing or behavior in an activity node that represents some transformation in the modeled system.

An action forms an abstraction of a computational procedure which is an atomic execution and therefore completes without interruption. An action is considered to take zero time and cannot be interrupted. In contrast, an activity is a more complex collection of behavior that may run for a long duration. An activity may be interrupted by events, in which case, it does not run to completion.

An action is a result of a system state change, and is realized by sending a message to an object or modifying a link or a value of an attribute.

An action may receive inputs in the form of control flows and object flows (the latter via input pins) and passes the results of its processing or transformations to one or more outgoing control flows or object flows (the latter via output pins) and onto downstream nodes.

Execution of the action cannot begin until all its prerequisites are satisfied. All incoming control flows have control tokens and all input pins have object tokens.

An action refers to the suite of rules and policies associated with a state machine state, and is represented as an object method.

Actions are contained within, and are provided context by activities.

An action behavior accompanies a transition event.

"Action" is a self-written and produced 1975 song by the glam rock band Sweet. The song went through several iterations; a 7" single version was recorded at Ian Gillan's Kingsway Studios in London and slightly different versions appear on the albums Strung Up and Give Us a Wink. It reached the Top 10 in 1975 in numerous European countries and Canada but stalled at #15 in the UK and #20 in the US. The lyrics refer to Sweet's negative treatment as pop-stars, particularly by the music press, and to the demands of the music industry. The track features a masked 'backwards vocal' with the words 'You kiss my arse'.

The song was also featured in Formula One's video for the 2009 Monaco Grand Prix.

Action is a 1980 Italian black comedy directed by Tinto Brass. The film is reminiscent of the director's earlier avant-garde low-budget works such as The Howl and Nerosubianco.

Brass faced many difficulties in Italy due to lawsuits concerning the production of Caligula so he filmed Action in London in 1979.

Action is a Dutch discount store-chain. It sells mostly small, low budget, non-food products. Action operates stores primarily in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France. In 2013 Action had a revenue of just over a billion euro, which was a 14% rise compared to 2012 when they had a revenue of 873 million euro.

Action is a song written by Tommy Boyce & Steve Venet, which was the theme song to the TV series Where the Action Is, a 1965 hit for Freddy Cannon.

Action (, Drasy; ) is a Cypriot bi-communal political alliance formed to contest the 2014 elections to the European Parliament, bringing together Greek and Turkish Cypriots in an electoral alliance for the first time since 1974. In Greek the alliance name is often stylized as Δ.Ρ.Α.Συ (D.R.A.Sy), a contrived acronym that stands for Bicommunal Radical Left Cooperation (, Dikoinotikí Rizospastikí Aristerí Synergasía).

ACTION was a United States government agency described as "the federal domestic volunteer agency". It was formed July 1, 1971, midway through President Richard Nixon's first term, under the provisions of Reorganization Plan Number One, and Executive Order 11603, June 30, 1971, to provide centralized coordination and administration of Government-sponsored domestic and international volunteer agencies.

Among the programs transferred to the new agency were:

• domestic volunteer programs established in the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) pursuant to the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 (78 Stat. 508), August 20, 1964:
  • Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and
  • the National Student Volunteer Program (NSVP);
• domestic volunteer programs established in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare pursuant to the Older Americans Act of 1965 (79 Stat. 218), July 14, 1965, and the Older Americans Act Amendments of 1969 (83 Stat. 111), September 17, 1969:
  • the Foster Grandparents program and
  • the Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP);
• the Peace Corps, the international volunteer programs represented established in the United States Department of State|Department of State]] pursuant to EO 10924, March 1, 1961;
• the volunteer action clearinghouse functions vested in the Office of Voluntary Action at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, pursuant to EO 11470, May 26, 1969.

ACTION also assumed from OEO responsibility for providing logistical support to the volunteer programs of the Small Business Administration (SBA):

• Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE), established April 1964;
• Active Corps of Executives (ACE), established August 1969.

ACTION's responsibility for SCORE and ACE terminated in 1976.

In addition, the Senior Companions program was established in ACTION in 1973. Foster Grandparents, RSVP, and Senior Companions were later merged into the Senior Corps.

Peace was Corps separated from ACTION in 1982.

The NSVP was redesignated National Center for Service Learning in 1980, and terminated and superseded by Student Community Service Projects in 1987.

ACTION's functions, and the Commission on National and Community Service, were ordered transferred to the newly established Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) no later than March 22, 1995, by Section 203 of the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993 (107 Stat. 892), September 21, 1993. AmeriCorps, which includes VISTA, and Senior Corps are programs of the CNCS. ACTION was abolished by Presidential Proclamation 6662, April 4, 1994 (3 CFR, 1994 ed., 22). See 362.1.

Action as a term in Western theatre practice refers to a principle from actor training first developed by Russian actor and theatre director Konstantin Stanislavski in the first half of the 20th century at the Moscow Art Theatre. It forms part of his overall structure of systematized acting training, most frequently called the System, which in its turn gave rise to Method Acting.

In his writings on theatre, Stanislavski states "The basis of theatre is doing, dynamism. [...] In Latin, the corresponding word is actio, and the root of this same word has passed into our vocabulary, "action", "actor", "act". So, drama is an action we can see being performed, and, when he comes on, the actor becomes an agent in that action" and "acting is action - mental and physical." Jean Benedetti understands action in a Stanislavskian context more simply as "What is done in order to fulfill a Task," a Task in its turn referring to "What a character has to do, the problem he has to solve." Action as a term in theatre practice derived from the Stanislavski System therefore refers to that which a character undertakes in order to achieve a goal.

Action was a newspaper of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF). The paper first appeared in 1936. The editor of the paper from 1939 was Alexander Raven Thomson, the BUF's chief ideologue. It ceased publication in 1940 due to the outbreak of the Second World War and the interment of the BUF's leadership. For most of its existence, Action ran parallel to the official mouthpiece of the BUF, The Blackshirt. After the launch of the less hard-line Action, The Blackshirt became more targeted at committed fascists.

Action took its name from an earlier 1931 newspaper of the same name for which Oswald Mosley had written.

A later newspaper of the same name was published by the Union Movement from 1966.