department
/dɪˈpɑɹtmənt/ noun B1- 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.
- 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.
- One of the principal divisions of executive government · the Treasury Department; the Department of Agriculture; police department
- One of the divisions of instructions · the physics department; the history department; the math department
- 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.
- A military subdivision of a country · the Department of the Potomac
Plural departments
From the library
It was still more impossible to remain in the department of the Oise, one of the most open and strictly guarded in France; this was quite out of the question, especially to a man like Andrea, perfectly conversant with criminal matters.
de Blacas and the minister of police, “I have no further occasion for you, and you may retire; what now remains to do is in the department of the minister of war.”
The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearinghouse, which makes out the balance.
We will suppose that a minister needs information as to a point which involves the Navy, India, Canada and the bimetallic question; he could get his separate advices from various departments upon each, but only Mycroft can focus them all, and say offhand how each factor would affect the other.
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