department
See also: Department
EnglishEdit
EtymologyEdit
Borrowed from French département.
PronunciationEdit
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /dɪˈpɑːtm(ə)nt/
- (General American) IPA(key): /dəˈpɑɹtmənt/
Audio (GA) (file) - Hyphenation: de‧part‧ment
NounEdit
department (plural departments)
- A part, portion, or subdivision.
- A distinct course of life, action, study, or the like.
- Technical things are not his department; he's a people person.
- 2014 November 14, Stephen Halliday, “Scotland 1-0 Republic of Ireland: Maloney the hero”, in The Scotsman[1]:
- Flair and invention were very much at a premium, suffocated by the relentless pace and often fractious nature of proceedings. The absence of James Morrison from the centre of Scotland’s midfield, the West Brom man ruled out on the morning of the game by illness, had already diminished the creative capacity of the home side in that department.
- 1856 December, [Thomas Babington] Macaulay, “Samuel Johnson [from the Encyclopædia Britannica]”, in T[homas] F[lower] E[llis], editor, The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, new edition, London: Longman, Green, Reader, & Dyer, published 1871, OCLC 30956848:
- superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department of literature
- A specified aspect or quality.
- The 2012 Boston Marathon was outstanding in the temperature department; runners endured temperatures of no less than 88 degrees Fahrenheit.
- A subdivision of an organization.
- (often in proper names) One of the principal divisions of executive government
- the Treasury Department; the Department of Agriculture; police department
- (in a university) One of the divisions of instructions
- the physics department; the gender studies department
- (often in proper names) One of the principal divisions of executive government
- A territorial division; a district; especially, in France, one of the districts into which the country is divided for governmental purposes, similar to a county in the UK and in the USA. France is composed of 101 départements organized in 18 régions, each department is divided into arrondissements, in turn divided into cantons.
- 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to the 1715-99, Penguin 2003, p. 427:
- The departments were the bricks from which the edifice of the nation was to be constructed.
- 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to the 1715-99, Penguin 2003, p. 427:
- (historical) A military subdivision of a country
- the Department of the Potomac
- (obsolete) Act of departing; departure.
- 1624, Henry Wotton, The Elements of Architecture
- sudden 'departments from one extreame to another
- 1624, Henry Wotton, The Elements of Architecture
SynonymsEdit
Derived termsEdit
- departmental
- departmentally
- Department of Redundancy Department
- department store
- fire department
- interdepartmental
- police department
- state department
- trouser department
TranslationsEdit
part, portion, subdivision
course of life, action, study, etc.
subdivision of organization
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territorial division
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
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