Department

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Department \De*part"ment\, n. [F. d['e]partement, fr.
     d['e]partir. See {Depart}, v. i.]
     1. Act of departing; departure. [Obs.]
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              Sudden departments from one extreme to another.


                                                    --Wotton.
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     2. A part, portion, or subdivision.
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     3. A distinct course of life, action, study, or the like;
        appointed sphere or walk; province.
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              Superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department
              of literature.                        --Macaulay.
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     4. Subdivision of business or official duty; especially, one
        of the principal divisions of executive government; as,
        the treasury department; the war department; also, in a
        university, one of the divisions of instruction; as, the
        medical department; the department of physics.
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     5. A territorial division; a district; esp., in France, one
        of the districts composed of several arrondissements into
        which the country is divided for governmental purposes;
        as, the Department of the Loire.
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     6. A military subdivision of a country; as, the Department of
        the Potomac.
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From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  department
       n 1: a specialized division of a large organization; "you'll find
            it in the hardware department"; "she got a job in the
            historical section of the Treasury" [syn: {section}]
       2: the territorial and administrative division of some
          countries (such as France)
       3: a specialized sphere of knowledge; "baking is not my
          department"; "his work established a new department of
          literature"

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  83 Moby Thesaurus words for "department":
     airspace, ambit, area, arena, bailiwick, beat, belt, border,
     borderland, branch, bureau, circle, circuit, commissariat, concern,
     confines, constablery, constablewick, constabulary,
     continental shelf, control, corridor, country, demesne, discipline,
     district, division, domain, dominion, environs, field, ground,
     heartland, hemisphere, hinterland, judicial circuit, jurisdiction,
     land, march, milieu, ministry, municipality, neighborhood, office,
     offshore rights, orb, orbit, pale, part, parts, place, precinct,
     precincts, premises, province, purlieus, quarter, realm, region,
     responsibility, round, salient, secretariat, section, segment,
     sheriffalty, sheriffwick, shrievalty, soil, space, sphere,
     subdiscipline, subdivision, terrain, territory, three-mile limit,
     twelve-mile limit, unit, vicinage, vicinity, walk, worry, zone
  
  

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  DEPARTMENT. A portion of a country. In France, the country is divided into 
  departments, which are somewhat similar to the counties in this country. The 
  United States have been divided into military departments, including certain 
  portions of the country. 1 Pet. 293. 
       2. By department is also meant the division of authority, as, the 
  department of state, of the navy, &c.